
Glass _32&-£lg£ 
Book JEI3 



Copyright^ . 



COFfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



COMMUNITY LIFE 



7' - 



Community Life 

FOR WOMEN 



BY 

SISTER EVA MARY 

OF THE COMMUNITY OF THE TRANSFIGURATION 

WITH INTRODUCTION 

BY 

BOYD VINCENT, D.D. 

Bishop of Southern Ohio 



Milwaukee 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 

1905 



-£ 



*«" 



& 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 


Two Copies Received 


NOV 24 1905 


Copyright Entry 


CLASS <X XXC. No, 

/ 3 10 1 % 

COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT BY 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 
1905 



,1- 






TO THE LORD AND LOVER 

OF ALL VIRGIN SOULS 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

WITH THE PRAYER 

THAT IT MAY BE TO HIS GLORY ONLY 

AND MAY ACCOMPLISH HIS WILL 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. — The Need of Eeligious Communities 1 

II. — Vocation ----- 15 

III. — Probation - - - 24 

IV. — The Eegular Life ------- 36 

V.— The Vow - 45 

VI. — The Common Life 55 

VII. — The Temptations of the Community 

Life 70 

VIII. — Popular Objections to the Commun- 
ity Life 83 

XI. — Helps and Hindrances - *• - - - 93 



PKEFACE. 




HEEE is an important distinction in 
the Christian life which must not be 
forgotten. There is the required 
Christian life; and there is the volun- 
tary "higher life." That is to say: 
There are depths of self-renunciation and heights of 
self-devotion for Christ's sake, which He encourages 
in some Christians, but which He does not demand 
of all. He denounced those Jews who denied family 
duties j even under the specious plea of "corban"; 
but of mere home joys he declared that "If any man 
hath left all . . . for My sake and the Gospel's 
.... he shall receive," etc. Speaking of voluntary 
poverty, He said to one young man: "If thou 
wouldst be perfect, go sell all that thou hast and give 
to the poor and come, take up the cross and follow 
Me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." As 
to voluntary singleness of life, "for the Kingdom of 
Heaven's sake," He said: "All men cannot receive 
this saying, save they to whom it is given. He that 
is able to receive it, let him receive it." As to volun- 
tary obedience to duly constituted human authority, 



x COMMUNITY LIFE. 

He said: "All things which they bid you do, that 
observe and do." As to the relative merits of the 
active and contemplative life He declared: "Mar- 
tha, thou art troubled about many things ; but Mary 
(who sat at His feet) hath chosen that good part 
which shall not be taken away." We have only to 
look at Christ's own life to see how faithfully He 
Himself acted on every one of these "counsels of 
perfection." 

St. Paul was the most vehement advocate of the 
moral rights of Christians; but he asserts no less 
vehemently that the law of love is greater even than 
the law of liberty, and declares that any Christian 
who waives his rights and voluntarily denies himself 
for the good of others, is doing a most praiseworthy 
thing. About the unmarried state, he says that vir- 
ginity is neither higher nor holier than marriage, 
but it is more desirable for those who want to wait 
upon the Lord without distraction (see I. Cor. vii.). 

In short, there are souls, plainly recognized by 
the Gospel itself, who feel themselves called by 
Christ's own voice to a life of special devotion to 
Him and special service of their fellow men; and 
who feel called to this life, too, in terms of entire 
consecration and separation from the world. You 
may not have that special call yourself, you may not 
feel that special desire ; but in Christ's own name let 
us bid God-speed to those who do. Call them "mys- 
tical souls," if you choose to — "enthusiasts," "devo- 
tees." That is really what they are; — souls with a 
different fibre or temperament, somehow, from our 
own more prosaic make-up. But they are what God 
Himself made them. They are the kind of souls, 



COMMUNITY LIFE. xi 

too, from which have come the poets, prophets, 
saints, and martyrs of all time. They are the kind 
of women, filled with a peculiar spirit of personal 
devotion, who, in the Gospel story itself, sat at 
Christ's feet to hear Him, and followed and minis- 
tered unto Him of their substance and poured the 
precious ointment on His head; who were the last 
at His cross and burial and the first at the empty 
tomb. Tou cannot repress such womanly enthusi- 
asm and devotion in the life of religion any more 
than you can elsewhere, and you ought not to want 
to; and therefore you are not wise either to despise 
it or to ignore it. It has asserted itself in every 
age of Christian history in one form or another, and 
it will continue to do so to the world's end. The 
rational thing, even the spiritual thing, seems to be 
to accept it as one of the workings of God's own 
Spirit on human nature, and so protect it and direct 
it and use it for the best ends possible. 

The Sisterhood life must have its roots some- 
where in the religious nature; for other religions 
than our own have encouraged and used it. It has 
a basis of its own in the earliest Christian history, 
too. From the earliest times there have been Orders 
of consecrated Christian women. They are not 
merely mediaeval or Eoman in origin. They did 
lapse at times into worthlessness and corruption. 
But modern Sisterhoods, avoiding former errors, 
and adding the active life to the contemplative, 
have won only gratitude and admiration for their 
usefulness, often from the most prejudiced. 

This little book, so strong and conclusive in most 
of its arguments, whether it induces you personally 



xii COMMUNITY LIFE. 

or not to feel a vocation for the work, does at least 
meet triumphantly all the common objections to the 
life, and not least when it declares: "Many of our 
laymen become converts to the Eoman Church, a 
scattering few of our priests .... but sisters from 
our Sisterhoods — never!" 

At any rate, while our own Church has not, as 
yet and as a whole, formally adopted the Sisterhood 
idea and organization as a part of her authorized 
order, yet they are fast making a place for them- 
selves among us, as an undeniable part of our 
beneficent Christian activities. 

And, finally, that which most distinguishes the 
particular "Sisterhood of the Transfiguration" in 
this diocese, of which the author is the respected 
Mother Superior, is not its lavish generosity and 
devotion in the two Homes it maintains for the 
young and for the aged, or even its other intensely 
practical parish work; but rather, first, that it has 
always been loyally subservient to the advice and 
wishes of its own Bishop, and next, that, instead 
of trying to keep itself wholly independent of 
Church authority, it earnestly asks for such recogni- 
tion by and subordination to the canonical author- 
ity of its own diocesan Convention. 

Cincinnati, Ohio, Boyd Vincent, 

October 26, 1905. Bishop of Southern Ohio. 




COMMUNITY LIFE. 
OHAPTEK I. 

THE NEED OF RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES. 

HIS is an age of organization. The 
futility of individual, unorgan- 
ized effort is generally recognized. 
Wherever a need is felt, some or- 
ganization, association, club — call it what you 
will — springs into existence to meet it. There 
are federations of labor against the tyranny of 
capital, and of capital against the excessive de- 
mands of labor and the waste of competition; 
there are guilds or associations of every kind of 
business, there are women's clubs for the eman- 
cipation of the intellect, and social organiza- 
tions for the formation of an aristocracy, and 
Mothers' Clubs for the discussion of the prob- 
lems of the nursery. There are charitable or- 



2 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

ganizations for the relief of want and the reduc- 
tion of crime, and Social Settlements for the 
social uplifting of the poor. In short, there 
is no department of human activity that is not 
covered or grappled with by some effort at or- 
ganization. Perhaps there is too much of it; 
perhaps there is danger of losing sight of indi- 
vidual right in common need. That is a prob- 
lem for the political economist of the future; 
we have the fact to consider and apply and take 
advantage of. 

The Church has always worked through 
organized effort. It was her organization that 
made her feared, hated, persecuted, and at last 
triumphant in the old Roman world, that made 
her supreme in the anarchy of barbarian inva- 
sions and the system of feudalism that rose from 
their peculiar notion of individual liberty re- 
gardless of the common weal. At last and by 
slow degrees the world has learned the secret 
of her power — though not the secret of her vital 
energy, which is the indwelling of the Holy 
Spirit — and is feverishly applying the lesson 
so recently learned to its various problems, 
social, and scientific, and is lost in wonder at 
its own achievements. But shall the Church, 
while willingly teaching the world the secret of 
civilization in its power and progress, herself 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 3 

relinquish her hold upon the tool wherewith she 
has carved out her seat of empire — a tool which 
may at any time become a weapon against her 
in the hands of a hostile world? Is her mis- 
sion indeed accomplished in having taught at 
last the federation of man ? Is there no further 
lesson to be taught in the Fatherhood of God? 
Has she no warfare against sin, no poor to re- 
lieve and help, no children to rear for Christ 
who loved the little ones ? Is it safe to leave 
such cares and such labors in the hands of even 
a civilized world, and herself sit with folded 
hands in the impotence of old age? Then, 
why, in the name of common sense, in the light 
of her own past history, in the name of Her 
Mighty Indweller, the Holy Spirit, are there 
some among us calling themselves by the sacred 
ISTame of Christ, who cavil at her organization, 
who advocate disruption and disintegration, 
who sneer at her ordered Communities ? 

It is not the purpose here to discuss her 
Apostolic Constitution which, thank God, is 
defended against attacks of her enemies, and, 
alas ! of her own children, by the most virile 
minds of the age; but only one form of her 
organized life, that of religious Communities, 
and in particular, Communities of women. 
Does the Church need such Communities, and 



4 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

how may she use them? Does she need them 
first — in her devotional life ? 

The ideal of the Church is the keeping of a 
perpetual Sabbath to the Lord, every day to 
be a day of worship and of praise. To this end 
were the daily offices of Morning and Evening 
Prayer set forth in her book of common wor- 
ship, and her provisions for a daily Eucharist. 
But where are her congregations for the daily 
services ? The majority of her people are far 
too busy and are much too scattered to attend 
church even once a day, far less twice or thrice. 
Their lives are not arranged for it. What man 
of business can take the time from his work 
for even a short service daily? Eew would 
have the liberty to do so, for the majority of 
men work under obedience, and the few who 
have command of their own time are pressed 
into a strenuous competition that demands more 
of them, longer hours and more concentrated 
attention, than tbay demand of their employees. 
What busy mother or housewife can leave her 
babies or her household cares to go out to the 
parish church for a daily service? She is not 
dressed for it, her day is not arranged for it, 
her duties are necessarily prescribed for her by 
the requirements of her husband and children. 
But the young people — have they no leisure in 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 5 

this overcrowded life of ours? Do the young 
not follow the example of their elders? Are 
they apt to go to church when their parents do 
not? And besides, are they not fitting them- 
selves for as keen a struggle as the older gen- 
eration are having, and the days are all too 
short even for them, with their school and their 
music, their technical education and their so- 
cial clubs. And so the clergy who are faithful 
to their ordination vow, and hold their daily ser- 
vices in empty churches, are, perhaps unduly, 
disheartened at what seems to them a general 
apostasy, and are the derision of their more 
easy-going brethren and of a success-loving 
world because of the futility of their efforts. 
But if in every city there were religious Com- 
munities where faithful priests could hold the 
daily services to a fit and devout congregation 
of women or of men, for it applies to both, 
whose lives are arranged around the daily ser- 
vices as a centre, what a strength it would be 
to the spiritual life of the Church, upholding 
to herself and to the world her true ideal of 
perpetual worship, encouraging her priests with 
the sense of fellowship and support, removing 
the scandal of unattended services from the 
eyes of the world, calling down the blessing of 
God by the unceasing round of devout prayer. 



6 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

If they served no other end than this, religions 
Communities of both men and women wonld 
be of inestimable value to the Church, to be 
encouraged, to be multiplied, to be strength- 
ened by her with the greatest care. 

But while this is the chief object of the 
Community life, and let us never lose sight of 
it in the lower uses, it is by no means the only 
one. The Church, indeed, has taught the world 
to build and equip and maintain hospitals and 
orphanages, schools and almshouses, as well as 
reformatories and prisons and insane asylums. 
But has she therefore shifted all her responsi- 
bility of active charity upon the shoulders of 
a willing world, delighted with the role of Lady 
Bountiful, and for the present dabbling in char- 
ity as she does in electricity, experimenting, 
applying, and throwing aside the old for the 
new ? How long will this zeal for good works 
last? Have not attentive ears already caught 
some notes of dissatisfaction and disappoint- 
ment with her toy, whose newness is somewhat 
tarnished by the unexpected ill success of her 
eleemosynary schemes- — the hospitals that the 
poor, sometimes too justly, dread as houses of 
physiological experiment and vivisection prac- 
tised on men instead of animals — the alms- 
houses filled with tramps in the winter, idle 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 7 

and vicious, only to go forth in the summer 
more idle and more vicious still — the orphan- 
ages with their high-salaried matrons and occa- 
sional revelations of tyranny — the insane asy- 
lums that seem to increase instead of diminish 
insanity in all its apalling forms — and last and 
dearest, the public schools, splendid in their 
discipline and equipment, that seem in the 
large cities at least, to be institutions where 
boys and girls, unhealthily mixed, may become 
graduates in every form of vice as well as in 
the useful branches of knowledge, and which 
fill our prisons with criminals as well as our 
counting houses with clerks ? Is this too dark 
a picture ? It is only the dark side of a pic- 
ture that has indeed many brighter colors to 
redeem it, but that dark side, unperceived and 
unconsidered at first, is growing, is gradually 
forcing itself upon the attention of thinking 
people. When it has so grown as to be seen 
even by the unthinking, then State charities are 
doomed, for the world will not father a failure. 
Who, then, will fall heir to the great buildings 
and vast apparatus now accumulating in each 
state, but that organization which shall have 
the staff of workers to carry them on, and which 
shall have approved itself to the common sense 
of men by its success in the very department in 



8 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

which the State has failed, the administration 
of charity? How, then, may the Church so 
differentiate her charities from those of the 
State that she may achieve success when the 
latter must confess failure? How, indeed, 
compete with the State at all, which has almost 
limitless resources, while the Church suffers 
from a chronic poverty, save by following her 
own ancient traditions in administering her 
charities through her religious Communities? 
They are undoubtedly cheap; only a plain liv- 
ing to be guaranteed, no high salaries to be 
paid; and then as to efficiency, they provide 
zeal and training and numbers. And as no 
high salaries are paid, so are there no small 
ones, the underlings being not servants but 
members of the Community, doing a humbler 
but no less important work than the highest, 
and infused with the same spirit of zeal and 
loyalty. Carrying their religious feeling into 
all their work, religion that teaches care for the 
soul as well as the body, charity in their hands 
is permeated with a regenerative instead of a 
debilitating quality. The idle and vicious are 
not attracted to almshouses where religious du- 
ties, more detestable even than work, are re- 
quired of them ; children trained in orphanages 
conducted by religious women are brought up in 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 9 

an atmosphere of love and are taught to be 
industrious and faithful, to show their faith 
by their works ; hospitals managed by religious 
Communities are for the relief of suffering 
rather than for the advance of science, where 
the sick may be cured rather than serve as sub- 
jects for lecture and experiment. From the 
Sisterhood schools, go forth young women not 
merely educated and accomplished, but with 
high ideals and earnest purpose. Alas! that, 
there are no Brotherhood schools for boys! 
Who can tell what might not be done even for 
the insane in the soothing atmosphere of a re- 
ligious Community, whose hearts were full of 
pity for the poor unfortunates committed to 
their care? I have not touched upon reform- 
atories and prisons, but already a certain class 
of criminal women are being committed to 
Sisterhoods for reform where it may be pos- 
sible, with immensely superior results to the 
old method of a matron jailer, perhaps as low 
in moral tone as some of her prisoners. 

While all Communities are not equally suc- 
cessful, and some are more fitted to one kind 
of work than to another, it is safe to say that 
there is no institutional work that could not be 
better done by a Community than by individual 
effort, more economically, and in a more relig- 



10 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

ious spirit, and therefore answering better to 
the real need. ]STo work for the body can be 
successfully done unless the soul is also ben- 
efited. The soul is too important a factor in 
human life ever to be disregarded, but unless 
the spiritual side of humanity is constantly be- 
ing emphasized in the daily life of the workers 
in hospital and orphanage, the physical need 
is sure to obscure and perhaps entirely over- 
shadow the other, and the recipients of charity 
have had their manhood taken out of them by 
being given relief from pain, God's stimulus 
to righteousness, at no cost to themselves nor 
any effort towards self-mastery. The hearts of 
the young and of the suffering are peculiarly 
susceptible to religious impressions, and if they 
see before them and in a measure take part in a 
daily round of prayer and praise to God, forc- 
ibly illustrated in the patience and tenderness 
of the care they receive, it would be a hardened 
soul indeed that would not be uplifted out of its 
sordid selfishness, and for a time at least, 
enabled to lay hold upon spiritual things. Char- 
ities conducted upon such a principle, no mat- 
ter how extended they may be, how indiscrim- 
inate apparently, make for strength and not for 
weakness, develop what manhood there is left, 
and are a power for righteousness in the world. 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 11 

But the Commuity life is needed not only to 
uphold the Church's devotional life, not merely 
to carry on her work of charity and education, 
but also as a sphere of activity for her own 
children. There is a great cry made that the 
labor market is overstocked, that women who 
do not need employment are displacing men in 
factory and counting room and school, that the 
competition is peculiarly unfair because they 
work not for bread but for pin money and for 
the sake of having something to do, and there- 
fore work for less than living wages. What- 
ever truth there may be in such statements, it 
is a fact that all the world seems to be working. 
Even young women of families that can afford 
a life of leisure, after a year or two of society, 
become the world's workers, as teachers, as 
actors, as authors, as artists. It is almost im- 
possible to form a Church Guild of young 
women that does not have its meetings in the 
evening because its members work during the 
day. Factories and stores are crowded with 
young life, and a man at forty-five who has not 
made himself indispensable by his ability, must 
stand aside and be supported by his sons and 
daughters. ]STow what is the meaning of this 
wholesale race for work, this ardor of competi- 
tion between the young and old ? May not this 



12 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

be the explanation ? In the pioneer life of this 
country, extending to within less than half a 
century ago, every one in the family had to work 
to subdue the land and bring it into civilization. 
The tilling of farms and the building of cities, 
the transforming of a wilderness, taxed the ut- 
most energies of an energetic race ; but that time 
of stress and labor is past, leaving behind it 
habits and instincts of activity noble in them- 
selves, painful to repress, and which seek an 
outlet in business for lack of something better, 
and by this feverish over-activity, produce those 
remarkable fluctuations from prosperity to 
panic, that have marked our commercial his- 
tory for a generation past. 

But those energies turned into the channel 
of the religious life would find an object worthy 
of themselves, and at the same time relieve the 
singular pressure upon the business world. 
Many a young woman who feels that her voca- 
tion is not for marriage, and wearied and dis- 
gusted with the emptiness and narrowness of a 
woman's life unennobled by the care of children 
or any earnest occupation, plunges into business 
as a refuge from frivolous society or equally 
frivolous amateur charities, in which she feels 
she has perhaps done more harm than good. 
What a boon to such a woman, and there are 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 13 

many of them who do not suspect the cause of 
their restlessness and dissatisfaction, would be 
the Community life, with its opportunities of 
useful activity and its high training of all the 
powers of mind and soul ! What a strength to 
the Church to be able to utilize and conserve 
energies now too often devoted to the service of 
the world ! What are her priests thinking of, 
that they do nothing to turn the flow of this 
rich tide into her own fair harbors ? Alas for 
the wrecked vocations that might have been 
saved, and alas for the Church and her clergy 
that let slip their priceless opportunities ! What 
wonder a blight, cold as frost, lies upon her 
services, her charities, her missions ? How can 
she ask more of God, of men, of workers, of 
blessings, when she throws away those she has 
in her hand ? Of old she subdued empires and 
cleared forests and civilized barbarians and 
converted the heathen with the weapon and the 
tool of the Community life. It still lies within 
her hand to be used as either a weapon or a tool, 
to wage war upon sin or to till the soil of the 
newly converted, but it lies useless in a nerve- 
less grasp. Mighty as its possibilities are, it 
is strong only as wielded by the good right arm 
of the Church of God. With it she may bring 
a world to its knees, or she may drop it in help- 



14 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

less impotence upon the ground. It is but a 
tool, a weapon, cunningly devised, sharp and 
polished, fit for its use, but with no life of its 
own apart from the Church. When will she 
awake from her strange f orgetfulness and smite 
the world once again with her strong battle-axe, 
mighty as a weapon, the most useful and the 
most primitive of tools ? 




CHAPTER II. 

VOCATION. 

HE initial difficulty of the Com- 
munity life is, to some people, the 
greatest of all, the being sure of 
the vocation. It causes much per- 
plexity and unrest so long as it is a debatable 
question, and it being a matter personal and 
individual to each soul, but little help can be 
given save in clearing away misconceptions. 

In the first place, it is God's choosing, not 
ours ; His calling to the soul, not the soul calling 
to God. He must speak first, and the soul's 
answer is its response to vocation, its acceptance 
or rejection of it. 

This removes it at once from the business 
notion of vocation, that the Community life is 
to be chosen as a method of spending one's life 
profitably to the Church of God and to our own 



16 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

edification. We do not choose it, but we are 
chosen to it, and it not "[infrequently happens 
that much unwillingness has to be overcome 
before the soul can accept its vocation. God 
chooses not as we would, and often waits with 
long patience for the object of His choice. 
When the outward difficulties have seemed in- 
superable, and inward distaste for it has 
amounted almost to rebellion, yet has He had 
His way at last, and will have, with every soul 
that really, however imperfectly, gives itself 
to be moulded by Him. Hence a strong dis- 
like to and apparent unfitness for the religious 
life are no proofs that there is no vocation. 
On the contrary, a soul in a healthy spiritual 
condition whom God had not called, would be 
apt not to think about it at alL 

There is no doubt but that if God has chosen 
a soul to the Virgin life, He will reveal His 
choice to that soul and give it an opportunity 
to accept or reject it. But sometimes from lack 
of spiritual insight and training, the soul fails 
to understand and respond; and so finally, the 
inward voice is stifled and silenced. 

There are four notes by which we may 
recognize vocation. 

First, it is individual. There are two as- 
pects in which a Christian may be regarded: 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 17 

as a member of the Body of Christ, the Church, 
and as an individual soul before her God. It 
is in this latter relationship that vocation comes 
to her, and so it comes not through any sacra- 
mental channel, but in the quiet closet when 
she is on her knees in private prayer and medi- 
tation, in secret and individual communion with 
her God. The enthusiastic resolve made in a 
great congregation, under tremendous emotional 
pressure, is much to be distrusted. The quiet 
call that comes, almost unheeded at first, in the 
calmness of a meditative hour, or in the course 
of a day's work faithfully done, the naming of 
your name and with it some task, some way of 
life, undesired perhaps, that draws out the cry, 
"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O 
Lord" — this is vocation. 

And the second note of vocation is repeti- 
tion. He does not depart at the soul's prayer, 
but calls again and again. Sometimes the call 
comes in childhood and is repeated again and 
again until middle life ; sometimes for a shorter 
period, but always with a repetition almost 
monotonous in its exactness, though often vary- 
ing in intensity; sometimes seeming faint and 
far off, sometimes close and direct, with 
startling distinctness and force. It comes not 
by our own volition, intruding upon times and 



18 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

occupations when, perhaps, we would willingly 
have barred it out, and again silent when we 
would naturally have expected it to assert itself. 
It is not the product of our own thoughts or 
fancies; often running counter to them, or 
breaking in upon them with the suddenness of 
an interruption. 

The third note of vocation is definiteness, 
and this is of gradually increasing power. At 
first one is often puzzled by the call, and asks 
again and again, "Lord, what wilt Thou have 
me to do ?" before the answer comes with any 
degree of distinctness, but the bewilderment 
sometimes comes, not from any lack of definite- 
ness in the call, but from lack of correspondence 
in the outward circumstances, as for example, 
when the call to the Sisterhood life comes to one 
brought up a Presbyterian, by no means an im- 
possibility, and perhaps occurring more fre- 
quently than we imagine. In such a case the 
very definiteness of the call would but deepen 
the bewilderment. It is not impossible, too, 
for us purposely to deceive ourselves with re- 
gard to the definiteness of the call to a life dis- 
tasteful to us. We are apt to think we do not 
know what God wants of us, when in reality we 
do not wish to do as He bids us. We are mas- 
ter hands at self-deceit, but we cannot hide from 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 19 

God, nor will He hide His purposes from us; 
and sooner or later we come face to face with the 
duty of definite answer to a definite proposition. 
The fourth note of vocation is authority. 
Any fancied call to a life not approved by the 
Church, or that leads out of the Church, or 
makes us independent of the Sacraments and 
Ordinances of the Church, is not of God. We 
see it happening around us very frequently, 
the false vocation. Women thinking them- 
selves called to be healers in Christian Science 
or prophets in Theosophy, and holding them- 
selves independent of the ordinances of Christ, 
and even the Salvation Army and its workers 
are by no means free from that reproach ; men 
leaving the priesthood of the Church for Rome 
or for the sects, in a mistaken zeal for unity; 
and there are hundreds of grosser instances of 
mistaken vocation, leading to the foundations 
of heresies and monstrous abortions of religion, 
which are very clearly from the devil. We 
must remember the counsel of the Apostle, to 
try the spirits and see whether they be of God, 
and the unfailing test is the known ordinances 
of God. Try the unknown by the known. If 
at variance with them, then we may be sure 
it is not the voice of God that has been calling 
us. Where the call is not in any way extraor- 



20 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

dinary, but simply to the Community life as 
established by the Church and approved by her 
from the earliest years of her history, there can 
be little doubt but that if it have the other notes 
it is a genuine vocation, and the soul that re- 
sists it, sins deeply against God, rejecting the 
future that He has planned for it. 

Let us consider now the Virgin character, 
the dispositions of the soul necessary to enable 
it to respond to vocation. These, too, can be 
classified into four, to correspond to the four 
notes of vocation. 

First, there must be attention. We cannot 
hear the call unless we listen to it. We must 
have the hearing ear that Samuel had, who 
knew not that God was calling him, yet heard 
the call and answered. When in the silence of 
an hour of prayer God calls us by our name, 
it is to claim our attention, because He has some 
message for us ; and that leads us to the second 
disposition, which is concentration. 

We must have not only the hearing ear, but 
the asking heart; not merely the readiness to 
come at call, but also to go at command. There 
are some children who are very quick to come 
when called, but forget the errand they are sent 
on before it is accomplished. They have at- 
tention but not concentration. So we often 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 21 

treat God. We respond when He calls us, but 
then we respond also to every other call that 
comes to us with equal readiness, and so, for 
lack of concentration, we lose the impression of 
God's will made upon our careless hearts. Con- 
centration is the perseverance of attention to 
one thing, and it is gained by changing one's 
occasional hour of prayer into a regular and 
stated devotion not dependent upon emotion or 
convenience, but held to with firm resolution 
in the lack of both. 

The third disposition is the submission of 
the will to God, and this is never gained without 
a struggle. The vocation, if it be a real one, 
has always some elements of renunciation in it, 
some family ties, some personal liberty, some 
private ambitions to be offered up to God. We 
may, indeed, look with some distrust upon a 
vocation that has nothing to give up, no struggle 
to make, nothing that is hard in it. We may 
well stop and ask ourselves, when such is the 
case, if it be really God's will we are accepting 
and not just our own. There is no sin in the 
struggle of the human will with God. We find 
it in our blessed Lord's suffering in Gethsemane. 
The sin comes in the final rejection of God's 
will, or in a partial instead of entire submission 
of our own will. We may not temporize with 



22 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

God, nor try to satisfy Him with half when He 
demands all. 

The fourth disposition is desire. This 
may seem a direct contradiction to the struggle 
noted above, but it is not really so. Not only 
is the desire the fruit of the struggle brought 
to a successful end, it is nearly always an ac- 
companiment of the struggle itself. The desire 
seems to be something independent of the will, 
something higher and more far-reaching in its 
gaze. The will sees the immediate sacrifices to 
be made, sacrifices of ease, of pleasure, of affec- 
tions; the desire sees afar the high reward of 
endeavor, the close walk with God, the peace 
and retirement and calm joys of a soul that has 
mastered self and possesses God. This desire 
is a direct gift of the Holy Spirit given with 
vocation and most necessary to its accomplish- 
ment in us. As a marriage without love, so 
would be the religious life without desire; a 
mockery of the holiest ordinances of God. 

The initiative, then, in the vocation to the 
religious life, must come from God, but once 
the call has come in such a way as not to be mis- 
taken, then the soul must accept it with all its 
consequences. But those consequences, while 
involving much sacrifice and pain, never involve 
real spiritual loss. Vocation is a fire that il- 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 23 

lumines the soul but does not consume. As the 
Virginity of the Blessed Mother of God is 
typified in the bush that burned with fire and 
was not consumed, so is it with every faithful 
soul chosen to the Virgin life. The fire burns 
and men expect to see the vitality, the human 
graces and affections to wither away and be 
consumed, but the miracle of Grace continues; 
and denied maternity, the Virgins of the Lord 
are given the grace of Motherhood, denied the 
Union and completeness of a human marriage, 
they are given completion in a close and holy 
union with Christ; denied the wisdom and the 
riches of this world, they are given heavenly 
wisdom and heavenly riches; denied the grace 
and joy of home life, they make homes for the 
homeless and bring joy to the joyless. And 
so these frail bodies of clay are made temples 
of the Holy Ghost, the living God; are impelled 
to things contrary to their nature and yet re- 
main in their integrity unconsumed. !Not con- 
tent with dwelling in the Church, He seeks the 
individual dwelling of each humble and faith- 
ful soul ; and mighty as is the burden of indwel- 
ling Divinity, our humanity remains unde- 
stroyed, but chastened, beautified, glorified. 




CHAPTEK III. 

PROBATION. 

N" the awakening of vocation, one of 
the first questions that naturally 
spring up in the mind is, how to 
get into touch with Sisterhood life 
through some special community. Too often, 
unfortunately, the questioner cannot go to her 
rector for the answer to her question. Com- 
paratively few of our parish priests are in sym- 
pathy with the Sisterhood life, still fewer know 
anything about it, or have any knowledge of 
particular Communities. In such a case one's 
best friend would be one of the Church Annuals, 
which give a list of the principal Sisterhoods 
with location of mother house and some idea 
of the work done by them, usually also the 
names of Visitor and of Chaplain. In writing 
for information, however, it is usually best to 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 25 

address directly the Mother Superior of the 
Order. It is not necessary to know her name; 
a letter addressed by the title alone and the 
name and place of the Mother House is suffi- 
cient. Do not suppose for a moment that you 
commit yourself to anything by such a step. 
The hesitation you may feel about committing 
yourself to a new and untried form of life is 
fully balanced by an equal hesitation on the 
part of any well regulated Sisterhood to ad- 
mitting a new and untried element into their 
common life. Under no circumstances would 
anyone be admitted into a Community without 
a trial of sufficient length to form a real test 
of character on the one hand, and of the require- 
ments of the life on the other. This test 
usually takes the form of a preliminary visit 
by the candidate during which she may view the 
Sisterhood from the outside, gain some ac- 
quaintance with its individual members, and 
take some part in its work. The Sisterhood, 
on the other hand, is studying the candidate, 
noting her capacities, her adaptability, her pos- 
sibilities as a companion through life as well 
as her utility as a worker. At the end of the 
visit she is as free to leave as any visitor would 
be, or she may be dismissed with a few words 
of kindly advice and in perfect friendliness. 



26 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

If, on the other hand, the mutual survey is sat- 
isfactory and a closer knowledge desired, the 
candidate may be given the rule to read, and 
after reading it, may make her application to 
the Superior to be received as postulant. No 
vows are taken, but the postulant usually wears 
a simple dress that marks her off from the 
visitors on the one hand and from the Sisters 
on the other. She is, as the name indicates, 
asking for admission to the Sisterhood, knock- 
ing at its door, looking through the slowly open- 
ing portal at the domestic life within but not 
yet a participant in it. 

The Postulate in most Sisterhoods lasts 
about six months. Withdrawal at any time 
during it is permitted and may at any time 
be requested by the Superior. If, however, 
this period of probation is successfully passed, 
the next step is the novitiate. The cloth- 
ing of the novice in the Sister's habit is a 
service at which all the Sisters at the Mother 
House are present. At this time the novice 
receives her Sister's name and is henceforth 
addressed as Sister. She is admitted far more 
intimately into the life than the postulant, is 
under the direct charge of, and with special 
obedience to, the Mistress of Novices, has her 
hours of instruction and of work, takes full 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 27 

part in the daily offices of the Sisterhood, and 
has her appointed place in the chapel, refectory, 
and the common room, and her set times for 
private prayer and meditation. In short, she 
is given full experience of the practical working 
of the rule in everything except in the govern- 
ing functions, in which of course she can take 
no part. During the novitiate, which may last 
from one to three years, according to the rule of 
the particular Community of which she may be 
a member, she is free to withdraw or she may be 
dismissed if she shows herself wholly unfit for 
the life without herself being conscious of it. 
On the other hand, however, she may acquit 
herself during her novitiate to the satisfaction 
of the Superior and the Mistress of Novices, and 
be recommended by them to the chapter of the 
whole Sisterhood. Every Sister is expected to 
vote on the profession of a new sister, and in 
large and scattered Communities, where many 
votes have to be sent in by mail, it is sometimes 
customary for the novice to spend the last year 
of her probation in visiting the different houses 
of the Community, both to become acquainted 
with all parts of the work and to learn to know 
the personnel of the Sisterhood, as well as to 
give them the opportunity of studying her. In 
every Sisterhood a majority of votes is neces- 



28 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

sary to her election; in some, a two-thirds ma- 
jority may be required. If she fail of election 
she must leave the Sisterhood, and may return 
to secular life, marry, and bear children, with- 
out fear and without reproach. She has at 
least gained experience and training in one or 
more kinds of Church work ; and while she may 
not wear the habit of the Sisterhood from which 
she has been excluded, there is nothing to pre- 
vent her application to other Sisterhoods, or to 
her Bishop for the canonical examinations of a 
deaconess, if she prefer that form of life and 
work. 

Any Sister, however, who has been elected 
and has taken her final vows, breaks those vows 
only at great peril to her soul. The Sisterhood 
will do nothing to restrain a discontented Sister 
from leaving them, both because discontent even 
in one member would poison the whole corporate 
life, and because voluntariness is of the very 
essence of the life, and a forced keeping of the 
vows would be a worse sin than their breaking. 
When Sisters break their vow of obedience 
and yet keep their vow of chastity there is less 
sin than in breaking the vow in every point, yet 
the unattached Sisters work grievous harm to 
the cause of Community life, the very faults 
which made its order and discipline distasteful 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 29 

to them becoming more conspicuous on their 
release from that discipline, and being too often 
attributed to the very manner of life that strove 
in vain to correct them. 

I have gone into some detail with regard 
to admission into Sisterhoods to show how 
every step is guarded against a mistake that 
would be as disastrous to the Community as to 
the individual. The length of the probation also 
produces well-trained workers, and every Sister 
professed in any of our Sisterhoods is adding 
materially to the working force of the Church. 

Correspondence with relatives, and, to a 
limited extent, with personal friends, is always 
allowed in every Sisterhood, and while the mail 
usually passes through the Superior's hands, 
this is more to insure its safe delivery than for 
oversight. In cases of doubt and perplexity, 
however, a Sister should go with the confidence 
of a daughter to her Mother Superior to ask her 
advice with regard to a correspondence that is 
causing her disturbance and unrest, and the Su- 
perior greatly appreciates the confidence, and 
knowledge gained of her young sister's corre- 
spondents by occasionally having letters volun- 
tarily brought to her for perusal. 

During the time of probation, as well as 
after profession, every Sister is allowed some 



30 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

sort of vacation every year, usually of a month's 
duration. This time may be spent with one's 
family if desired. In cases where the Sister has 
no family or has felt them estranged from her 
by her resolute adherence to her vocation, her 
time of rest is arranged for by the Superior, 
usually at some other house belonging to the 
Community. Proper attention to the rules of 
health is considered a religious duty in every 
Sisterhood, the consequences of neglect in this 
matter being too serious to allow of disregard. 
Put away from your mind all thought of pro- 
longed fasts and weary vigils, of sleeping cold, 
and hard living. The severe asceticism of the 
Middle Ages does not find much favor in any of 
our present Communities, the conditions of the 
times and the exigencies of work being so much 
more strenuous, and of themselves giving much 
room for self-denial and even self-immolation 
if need be. At the same time the regularity 
of the life, long hours for sleep, sufficient though 
plain food, comfortable though simple accommo- 
dations, secure the best sanitary conditions ob- 
tainable in our modern world. While the work 
is severe and continuous and is often a great 
strain on the sympathies as well as the physique, 
there are hours of rest and of public and pri- 
vate prayer scattered throughout the day that 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 31 

do much to relieve the pressure, while any great 
responsibility is so shared by the whole Com- 
munity and divided among its various mem- 
bers as not to rest too heavily upon any one. 
It is a great thing just to be freed from the in- 
cubus of servants. Where there are Sisters 
enough to do their own work, or where it is part 
of their work to direct and train young girls in 
housework, the household wheels run much 
more smoothly than in many families where 
large sums are paid for service grudgingly 
and indifferently done. In fact all the ele- 
ments of happiness and of health meet together 
in the simple, sane, wise administration of a 
Community of women devoted to the service of 
God, loving one another, and ready and willing 
and able to do any service required of them. 
If one loses health and happiness in such a life 
it is because she brings the seeds of disease and 
discontent with her from her former life. This 
is by no means impossible, many people mistak- 
ing discontent with their present surroundings 
for vocation to religion. Most Sisterhoods re- 
quire from their candidates some assurance of 
their good health and freedom from hereditary 
taint of mind or body, and also freedom from 
paramount family duties. 

In the present popular attitude towards 



32 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

the Church and especially towards the re- 
ligious life, it is impossible to consider fam- 
ily opposition in itself a bar to admission 
or we would have no Sisters; but the condi- 
tions of that opposition are always inquired 
into, and if it is such that it would bar 
marriage equally with the religious life, the 
aspirant is kindly advised to devote herself to 
those home duties until God shall open the way 
for her to fulfil her vocation. A few years of 
patient waiting sometimes make a good prepara- 
tion for the Sister's life, and often give an op- 
portunity to study the work of the different 
Communities and finally, perhaps, make a 
choice other than one would have made if un- 
hindered in the first instance. Do not wait too 
long, however. When the character becomes 
set it is not easy to make it flexible again, and 
for this reason some of the Sisterhoods have an 
age limit beyond which they will not receive 
candidates. 

For the candidate must not be too old to 
acquire the new habits of life which may be 
required in the Sister's daily routine. For one 
thing, a habit of silence is part of every Sister's 
training. 'Not merely must there be a certain 
atmosphere of silence in even the busiest of 
the religious houses, but every Sister should 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 33 

have that as an intangible atmosphere about 
herself — not in unapproachableness nor in any 
lack of courteous responsiveness to the conver- 
sation of others, but there should be and usually 
is a noticeable absence of volubility and dwell- 
ing upon unnecessary detail so common among 
women. The hours of private meditation are 
high and lofty subjects of thought, the reading 
of books that develop the mind rather than an- 
swer the fancy, tend to develop a temper of 
mind that unconsciously rises above the small 
weaknesses too often fostered in the secular life 
of women. 

Silence at meals may seem at first to the 
novice, accustomed to the eminently social char- 
acter of the dining room of ordinary family 
life, as cold and constrained, and making too 
much of a business of eating and drinking. 
This feeling gradually passes away, however, 
as she perceives that every meal is looked upon 
as a form of worship, beginning with a solemn 
dedication of the food to God's service and end- 
ing with thanksgiving. As to the quality of 
food, while it is plain, it is substantial, and, 
being prepared with that delicate attention to 
perfect cleanliness that is characteristic of every 
part of Sisterhood life and work, is palatable 
even to weak appetites. The flow of talk which 



34 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

is restrained throughout the busy day, confined 
as it is chiefly to the necessary instructions and 
exigencies of the work, so avoiding the distrac- 
tions and waste of time caused by irrelevant 
conversation, finds its outlet in the Community 
room at the recreation hour. In a large Sister- 
hood the novices may have their own Common 
room apart from the Sisters, but in the small 
Sisterhoods or in the Branch houses such divi- 
sion is neither possible nor advisable, and the 
newcomers are admitted into the charm of a 
conversational hour that reminds one a little 
of the descriptions of those delightful salons in 
France of the old regime, where discussions of 
literature and art displaced court gossip and 
intrigue, and where gaiety and good-humored 
wit consorted with seriousness of thought and 
purpose. 

Youth is the time when we form our habits, 
when we set the course of our future develop- 
ment. The talkative woman of middle age 
can hardly acquire the habit of seasonable 
silence, the silent and diffident can hardly, when 
the character is set, unbend to the geniality of 
the social hour. 

Sacrifice and renunciation, which come 
easily to the heart of youth, become as easily 
the habit of later life, but a youth that is passed 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 35 

in self-pleasing or in weak vacillation will 
rarely develop a character suited to the Sister- 
hood life. Vocation makes itself heard usually 
in youth. There is a high tide of spiritual im- 
pulse when it may be launched into the channel 
of probation, but if the tide be allowed to ebb 
out, leaving the soul in the waste sands of a 
spent vocation, it can hardly produce the fruits 
of common Christianity, and certainly not those 
of the counsels of perfection. 




OHAPTEE IV. 

THE REGULAR LIFE. 

HE regular life — from the Latin 
regulus, meaning rule — is the life 
governed by a stated rale. In the 
Middle Ages, the regular clergy as 
distinguished from the parish clergy were those 
gathered into Communities and living by a 
religious rule; the regular orders of monks, as 
distinguished from friars, and, later, the 
Jesuits, were those who had a settled rule which 
they were bound to observe. It is perhaps 
necessary to make this explanation, because the 
word regular has lost its primitive meaning of 
religious rule. The word Methodist had a sim- 
ilar origin, being applied to the followers of 
Wesley before they left the Church as those 
who used method in their religion, a settled 
plan of life which was so ordered that certain 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 37 

devotional practices should form part of every 
day. 

We can readily see that regularity in the 
ordinary business of life is of the utmost im- 
portance ; regular hours for business, for meals, 
for rising and retiring, and in the care and 
training of children. The one thing we leave 
to the chance of feeling or of leisure is our 
devotions. Women who would be horrified not 
to have a regular hour for bathing the baby, 
never dream of having a regular hour for say- 
ing their prayers. Of course we are not con- 
sidering the hasty little snatch of a minute or 
two that most people content themselves with 
morning and evening, but a settled period of 
the day, lasting from twenty minutes to an 
hour, with regular, stated devotions, including 
Bible reading and some devotional exercises, 
meditation, or devout reading. Most people 
will say they have no time for that, though they 
find time for a little of everything else in their 
crowded lives. Some people will say that such 
regularity is making religion too mechanical, 
that it should be spontaneous and from the 
heart, though I think these same people would 
not consider their love for their children the less 
from their heart, because it found expression 



38 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

in duties and services done for them at regular 
times. 

As a matter of f act, the reason there is so 
little genuine piety among us is because so little 
effort is made to cultivate it. The spiritual 
life requires the same care as any other of our 
faculties. It must have daily aliment ; it must 
not be left to the chance of a passing and spas- 
modic emotion. If we do not care enough 
about it to give it twenty minutes a day, we 
must not be surprised that it should die, that the 
fountain of emotion should in time cease to 
flow; and if all our thoughts and desires are 
limited to this world and this life, it ought not 
to surprise us if there is no place prepared for 
us in the world to come. Indeed, what happi- 
ness would there be in heaven for those who do 
not desire and love God on earth ? We are told 
that the main occupation of heaven is the wor- 
ship of God. What a weariness perpetual wor- 
ship will be to those who have not accustomed 
themselves to worship at all! Can we doubt, 
then, the duty of a stated rule of prayer incum- 
bent upon all Christians ? 

The Community life is formed upon its 
Rule — it could not exist without it. The Rule 
is its very heart. It pervades the whole day 
and every hour of the day. It is never absent 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 39 

from the mind of those bound to observe it. It 
is the Yoke our Lord tells us of that teaches 
lowliness and meekness and brings rest to the 
soul. For the soul does find rest and peace in 
regularity as much as the mind and body do. 
The habits of the Society are formed by the 
Rule, its daily routine settled by it, and the 
temper of the members of the Community is 
moulded by it. It is usually in two parts : one 
controlling the outward life, the dress, work, 
hours of prayer, recreation, and the like, and 
this is called the exterior Rule; the other, the 
interior Rule, directs the disposition of mind in 
which all the acts of the exterior rule should be 
done. The object of the Rule is twofold, (a) 
the personal holiness of each individual mem- 
ber, and (&) the harmony of the whole Com- 
munity. No one is allowed to enter a Sister- 
hood until she has become thoroughly familiar 
with the Rule, and has given her hearty assent 
to it. Hence the adoption of the Rule is in 
each case voluntary; but once adopted, obedi- 
ence to it in every detail is obligatory. It is 
for this reason that candidates for the Sister's 
life must always pass through a novitiate before 
being allowed to take the vows. It is during 
the novitiate that they are taught the Rule and 
learn to practise it. In every large Sisterhood 



40 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

one of the older Sisters is usually Mistress of 
the Novices, and it is her duty to explain the 
Rule, to train the novices in it, and herself to 
set the example of perfect obedience to it. In 
very small Sisterhoods, that are just beginning 
their life, this duty usually falls upon the Su- 
perior. A long novitiate is a great advantage 
both to the candidate and to the Sisterhood, and 
there should be very few cases in which it should 
be allowed to be shortened. It gives the Com- 
munity well-trained Sisters, and enables the 
candidate fully to test herself before taking the 
irrevocable step of the vow. 

The discipline of the Rule is constant. It 
enters into and regulates every detail of the 
daily life, work, and recreation, and prayer, 
companionship with others, and hours of sol- 
itude. With a constant pressure, it moulds 
each individual that comes under its obedience, 
paring away individual peculiarities and ex- 
crescences of zeal, toning up deficiencies and 
depressions of character, making a place for 
each member of the Community, and making 
that member fit her own place. 

It must not be supposed that this process of 
fitting the individual to her place in the Com- 
munity really injures her individuality, or that 
all members of the Community are made on the 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 41 

same model and come out after a few years of 
training exactly alike. On the contrary, indi- 
vidual beauties of character are brought out and 
developed by the Rule; but by harmonizing 
them with others, not by contrasting them with 
defects. It is like the taking of pieces of 
bric-a-brac of varying value and form from the 
confusion of a shop, and arranging them with 
care and taste in a drawing room; the pieces 
are not less individual than before; but har- 
monized with one another and with their sur- 
roundings, they give the general impression of 
order and unity; or in playing the piano, the 
notes are not less individual when harmonized 
into chords and beautiful music, than when 
struck at haphazard into harsh discords. It is 
thus that the Rule plays upon the various indi- 
viduals of a Community, striking some differ- 
ent tone out of each, and yet in perfect har- 
mony with all the others, and forming a unity 
out of the various elements that are brought 
together for combination. 

While it is the object of the Rule to bring 
harmony of life and unity in work out of the 
Community as a whole, it is also its purpose to 
develop and perfect each individual in the way 
of holiness; and while the exterior Rule is es- 
pecially adapted to the one object, so it is the 



42 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

interior Rule which is designed to attain the 
other. The various acts of the Community and 
its members are directed by the Rule, and the 
very thoughts and intents of the heart are not 
free from its control. A faithful obedience to 
the Rule in its spirit as well as in the letter, in 
the interior dispositions as well as in the out- 
ward acts, produces a character self-contained 
and self-constrained, in which self, with its 
egotism, its passions, its indulgences, has been 
mastered in the interests of the Community and 
the service of God, in which natural gaiety of 
mind has not degenerated into frivolity, nor 
natural gravity into gloom, but both meet in a 
Christian cheerfulness and equality of temper 
best described by the word serenity; in which 
practical good sense is mingled with exalted 
principle, and so escapes commonplaceness on 
the one hand, which is so often taken for com- 
mon sense, and impracticability on the other, 
which is sometimes mistaken for spiritual ex- 
altation. 

The Rule cultivates a spirit which will be 
free from captious criticism, and enlarged with 
a genuine humility which will neither fear the 
future nor regret the past, and which will rest 
its present in a sure anchorage upon God. 
Such an one will love solitude and retreat as 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 43 

a time of communion with her Lord, and will 
not shun the society and companionship of 
others, whether members of the Community or 
not. She will not think much of her influence 
or power over others when with them, nor will 
she talk much of herself or of her experiences ; 
she will rather strive to learn from their ex- 
ample and their conversation how better to 
serve and love her Lord. She will not recog- 
nize her portrait as here drawn, but will know 
of someone else to whom the description applies. 
She will shrink from praise, knowing how many 
times she has failed to live up to her rule. She 
will not be angry when blamed, even though the 
blame may be unjust, but will strive to make it 
an occasion of penitence for occasions when she 
should have been blamed and was not. 

If you say such a character is impossible, 
it will but show your ignorance of what the 
grace of God can accomplish in a human heart 
that has given itself unreservedly to His di- 
rection. The Religious life is now and always 
has been illuminated and made beautiful by 
such characters, and there have been many even 
in the distractions and trials of secular life ; but 
fewer, because there are fewer in the world who 
live in close and secret obedience to a Religious 
Rule. For it is a character that can be formed 



44 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

only by rule, regular habits holding the soul 
true in its hours of depression to its aspirations 
in the hour of exaltation. 

A good Sister, then, must love her rule, 
make it a part of herself, give it a whole-souled 
obedience. The least infraction of it should be 
a pain to her; and yet she should be so thor- 
oughly imbued with the spirit of it that she 
should not hesitate to sacrifice some minor de- 
tail in the interests of charity. The narrow, 
mechanical observance of the Rule is as much 
to be avoided as a lax and self-indulgent neglect. 
It is the large-hearted observance of the whole 
that makes the good Sister. There are many 
good women in a Community, but comparatively 
few good Sisters, even in our largest and best 
equipped Sisterhoods. 




CHAPTER V. 

THE VOW. 

SACRIFICE to be acceptable to 
God must be human. It has been 
the instinct of man from the very 
beginning, that the blood of the in- 
ferior animals could not atone for man's sin. 
Man alone could be offered for man. And this 
instinct is satisfied and justified in the Sacrifice 
of Christ upon the cross. But that sacrifice 
avails us nothing unless we add ourselves to it. 
In vain we would offer something else, money, 
time, service — the sacrifice must be ourselves, 
with the human will offered up as an oblation. 
It was for this reason Christ's sacrifice was nec- 
essary; not to appease an angry God, but to 
make it possible for men to offer up themselves 
as an acceptable sacrifice to God, which can 
only be when, cleansed and purified from sin, 



46 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

they are in sacramental union with Christ. 
This offering, then, is made by every Christian 
at his Baptism, and it is made for life by tak- 
ing a life vow of threefold obligation : of faith, 
of renunciation of sin, and of obedience. 

It was in order to the more perfect fulfil- 
ment of this vow, that the Virgin life was insti- 
tuted in the very beginning of the Church and 
continued to the present time in its well ordered 
Communities. The threefold vow of the Com- 
munity life is but a closer application of the 
Baptismal vow, the vow of poverty being the 
outcome of faith in God's providence and prom- 
ise; of chastity being the renunciation of all 
the entanglements of the world, the flesh, and 
the devil; and the vow of obedience to God's 
holy commandments, not only as expressed in 
His general law, but as particularized in the 
Rule of the Community. That it should be 
taken for life is of its very essence, the Bap- 
tismal vow being for life ; and those Communi- 
ties in the Roman Church in which the vow is 
not for life, but repeated year by year, accom- 
plish this purpose by evasion, the intention in 
each repetition being for life. Granting these 
exceptions, which are so only in appearance, not 
in fact, the general custom in Communities is 
that the vow should be binding for life. It gives 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 47 

that sense of stability and permanence as neces- 
sary to happiness in the religious life as in mar- 
riage, and a broken vow is as great an apostasy 
as is divorce. There are, unfortunately, wander- 
ing sisters, those who have broken away from 
their obedience and have no fixed place in any 
Community. They do great harm to the cause of 
the Religious life by the very faults that made 
them unworthy members of it. But, such is the 
weakness of our human hearts, if it were not 
for the strength of the life vow, if we were free 
to leave at any time, might not any one of us, 
in some moment of weakness, yield to a passing 
temptation and become even as they, restless 
wanderers driven forth and ever forward by a 
spirit of discontent ? If in the marriage vow it 
is said, "What God hath joined let not man put 
asunder/' how much more is it true of this — 
What is joined to God, let not man put asunder ! 
Keeping the vow, then, is the cleaving of the 
soul to God ; and so long as it is in living touch 
with Him, just so long will it receive the stream 
of divine grace flowing into it, making it beau- 
tiful, making it strong, the wonder alike of its 
enemies and its friends. 

In itself the soul is weak, and it would seem 
to the naturally minded to be made weaker by 
its vow, cut off as it is from the natural helps 



48 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

to virtue and piety, and many things made sin 
to it that are not to one who has taken no vow, 
and surrounded by many more enemies both 
human and diabolic by reason of it. But the 
vow is supernaturally strong, in that it binds 
the soul to God, and so through it the soul re- 
ceives grace to conquer. The cutting off of hu- 
man helps is but to draw us closer to the Divine 
Helper. It is a slender cord, to all appearances 
so easily broken and yet held by omnipotent 
strength. Not till we ourselves have slackened 
our grasp upon it does it weaken ; none but our- 
selves can break it. 

This cord is made up of three strands, the 
three vows — or more accurately speaking, the 
three parts of one vow — being poverty, chastity, 
and obedience. 

The Virgin life should be a life of holy pov- 
erty, a renunciation of wealth, or the pursuit 
of it, that the whole time may be consecrated to 
works of mercy and the worship of God. Yet 
holy poverty does not mean bitter want. On 
the contrary, our Lord promised those who em- 
braced this life a sufficiency of all things need- 
ful; "For your Heavenly Father knoweth ye 
have need of these things/' He said. But hav- 
ing food and raiment therewith to be content, 
content with the daily supply, not laying up for 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 49 

the morrow or being anxious about it, that is the 
spirit of holy poverty. In this age and in this 
country, where the pursuit of money is so ab- 
sorbing, so fierce, when so many souls make 
shipwreck of their eternal hopes upon the gold- 
en, treacherous shoals of Mammon, it is of spe- 
cial value to have here and there, examples of 
holy poverty to bring back to men's minds a 
saner and happier ideal of living, to recall to 
them the fact of God's Providence which sup- 
plies all our real needs, even when every faculty 
is stretched to obtain for ourselves what we do 
not need, and to show by contrast the sordidness 
and narrowness, the vulgarity even, of mere 
worldly wealth compared with the breadth and 
calm of the heavenly riches. That there should 
be some in the world who believe in the reality 
and value of these Heavenly riches and are will- 
ing to renounce worldly wealth for them, will 
help to raise the eyes of many others to those 
same riches, to calm the fever in their blood, 
to seek their portion in them. To have settled 
Communities having God for their portion and 
caring for no other, must be a blessing to any 
people. How important, then, is it for those 
Communities to be true to the ideal God has set 
them, truly to love holy poverty, never to desire 
anything but what God freely gives us. True, 



50 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

we may ask both Him and His stewards for 
what we have need of — pride is a sin as well as 
avarice — but to be perfectly content whether it 
be little or much, and whatsoever we have, to 
share with others. We may own nothing for 
ourselves, though the Community may be en- 
riched through us ; to endure labors, hardships, 
coarse clothing and poor beds, crowding, 
perhaps, as the poor are crowded, with all 
its attendant inconveniences, is our privilege in 
the fulfilment of the vow of poverty. If we 
count it not as a privilege, if we make it a sub- 
ject of discontent and complaint, we are in so 
far false to our vow. 

As the vow of poverty is the sacrifice of the 
mind and its ambitions, the renunciation of the 
world and its rewards, the vow of chastity in- 
volves the affections, the ties of family and 
home, the hope so dear to every woman's heart 
of wifehood and motherhood. So the affections 
and desires of the heart are not stifled, not 
killed, but made sacrificial in their nature, and 
our hearts, united to the Human Heart of Jesus 
Christ, are offered upon the altar of the vow to 
God. When His love becomes supreme in the 
soul, and that and nothing else is the object of 
the vow of chastity, all other loves must be held 
in subordination to the mastery of that one love, 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 51 

given up to it, may be, enduring separation, 
may be, or perhaps strengthened and satisfied, 
but always held loosely and subject to His will. 
And it also involves the taking up into the heart 
new and strange loves, such as it had not known 
before; the love of the poor in spite of their 
faults, the love of strangers in the duty of hos- 
pitality, remembering always the wonderful 
possibility of their being angels or messengers 
of God to us; the love of the Community, our 
adopted family, which is to us in the place of 
that which we have renounced; and hardest of 
all, love of our enemies, since Christ died for 
them also, and for us when we were enemies to 
Him. This imperious Love of God dominating 
our hearts, forbids us ever to desire other loves 
than He allows us, forbids us to doubt or ques- 
tion in any way or at any time His love for us, 
and forbids us, too, to rest in any love but His, 
even in any love that He Himself has provided 
for us, such as our Community, or our poor. 
Our love may go out to others, it must dwell 
only in Him. The heart that is offered up to 
God in the vow of chastity must be pure, must 
be aflame, must be constant; virgin and alight 
with the fire of the Holy Ghost, and God's till 
death — the Virgin's heart, the Apostle's heart, 
the Martyr's heart — such is the offering He de- 



52 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

lights in, such is the love our Lord craves even 
in the glories of Heaven. Such hearts are 
forged in the crucible of Divine love, they can 
be found only at the foot of the Cross. 

The vow of obedience involves the renuncia- 
tion of the will. It is fundamental to the Com- 
munity life, which could not exist without it. 
It is perhaps the most important of the three 
vows in its discipline of character, the will 
being the last stronghold of the creature in con- 
flict with his Creator, it being harder to obey 
than to renounce. It is a mistake to suppose 
that it reduces men and women to the status of 
children, for the law is really universal; as no 
business, no society, no domestic life could be 
carried on without obedience of one to another. 
In the Community life the vow is twofold in its 
requirements : obedience to Rule, and obedience 
to Superiors, the one covering the stated acts 
and times of each dav, the other its occasional 
and varied duties. Now this obedience, while 
it disciplines and trains the will, no more de- 
stroys it than chastity destroys the heart or pov- 
erty the mind. Self-mastery is never self-de- 
struction. On the contrary, it enables to a com- 
pleter and higher use of all the faculties, and 
religious obedience in destroying self-will, 
really gives self-mastery. For all rightful au- 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 53 

thority has its true source in God ; and in obey- 
ing it, we are really giving obedience to God; 
in rebelling against it, we are in rebellion 
against Him; in usurping it when it is not 
rightfully ours, we are assuming His preroga- 
tives. Obedience cultivates in the soul the vir- 
tues of humility, patience, and fidelity, strong 
virtues all, the virtues of Virgins, of Apostles, 
and of Martyrs — and it subdues the vices of 
pride, self-will, and imperiousness, the sins that 
lie at the root of most of our failures. Who 
then would wish to be without its holy disci- 
pline ? Let such not think to enter the Com- 
munity life, and those in Communities that are 
set over them as head over all must learn to be 
servants of all, if indeed they are minded to 
rule in the spirit of the Lord. 

Such is the threefold vow, its extent and its 
requirements. It extends throughout the whole 
of life, it requires the submission of every part 
of us to the Yoke of Christ. In reality it is 
binding upon every Christian, and practically 
every good and devout Christian conforms his 
life to it more or less. Are we appalled at the 
burden of it ? But in truth it is no burden, but 
a means by which we may carry our life burden 
of sins, of sorrows, of labors, and of disappoint- 
ments, and the more easily and the more surely 



54 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

be guided to our true goal. The undisciplined 
soul is indeed to be pitied, and who would not 
prefer the calm and peace of a deliberate choice 
of God's will, to the vagaries and final failure 
of self-will? We must all serve in a free or 
forced obedience. Shall it be as children in the 
House of the Lord, or as slaves in the dark 
abode of Satanic hate ? Obedience to God is the 
true freedom of man, and the religious vow 
which is a help thereto is a staff in our hand 
placed there by the Church at our Baptism, and 
made into a cross at its renewal in the Religious 
life. "Yea, though I walk through the valley 
of the shadow of death, Thy rod and Thy staff 
comfort me." 



CHAPTEK VI. 

THE COMZtfOX LIFE. 




OME people object to the Commun- 
ity life on the ground that the Vir- 
gin life can be lived to better ad- 
vantage at home, that there are 
more opportunities for doing good, more ways 
of self sacrifice in the common round of daily 
family life than can be obtained by breaking 
those ties, involving others in the same sacrifices 
and setting oneself apart from the interests and 
sympathies of people whom it is our professed 
object to help. Such objections being the 
strongest argument that the opponents of Sister- 
hoods have, they are the most frequently urged 
in ever varying forms, and sometimes cause real 
trouble to devout souls seriously considering 
their call to the Community life. 

It may be answered that the argument, like 



56 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

most fallacies, overlooks one essential point. 
Most families indeed, offer almost limitless op- 
portunities for self-sacrifice and humble, un- 
thanked service, both of which are exhausting 
to the soul's supply of grace; few, if any, can 
offer means of restoring those supplies to the 
soul. It is true that grace is given us to be used 
for others, but when the vessel is emptied, and 
our souls are so shallow, they can hold but little 
at a time, it must be filled again at the Divine 
Source of all grace. It is this process of filling 
in order to empty and emptying in order to 
fill again, that makes all spiritual growth. It 
is for this reason that the household drudge so 
rarely becomes a bright and beautiful saint of 
God, though living constantly a life of self- 
sacrifice. We all know the type of old maid 
serving patiently as a family helper, and yet 
belittled by gossip, by some odd frivolity of 
dress, by shallowness of mind; whom we pity 
and do not admire, even while admitting she is 
not living for herself but for others ; for others 
but not for God. 

But this is not a mere theory. As a matter 
of fact, both ways of serving God in a conse- 
crated life have been tried by the Church, and 
the Common life has been preferred to the fam- 
ily life after actual trial of both. The Virgins 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 57 

of the Early Church consecrated themselves to 
God by life vows, but remained in their own 
homes, or those who had heathen families were 
adopted into some Christian household, and so 
tried to serve God. And they did valuable and 
well appreciated work for the Church, minister- 
ing to the poor, caring for the sick in plague 
stricken cities, consoling prisoners, and often 
themselves winning the crown of martyrdom. 
Yet we find from St. Cyprian's letter to Vir- 
gins, that there were serious abuses among them 
arising from the lack of the Common life with 
its strict oversight of individual members, that 
there were wolverines among these lambs of 
Christ's flock; and while that does not seem to 
the great Carthaginian Bishop any reason for 
destroying the whole flock, a somewhat modern 
method of reformation which we do not find in 
the fathers of the Early Church, he endeavors 
to correct the abuses by a pastoral letter, not yet 
having discovered the remedy of the Common 
life which was almost universally adopted by 
the Virgins a hundred years later. It is a sig- 
nificant fact that the Church having once estab- 
lished the Common life for her Virgins, never 
went back to the old way of the family life, and 
that during the three hundred years, more or 
less, in which the English branch of the Church 



58 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

was deprived — chiefly by political oppression — 
of the Common life, she had no professed and 
consecrated Virgins. It is a full answer, there- 
fore, and surely a satisfactory one to all who are 
ii ot blinded by prejudice, that the other way, 
the Virgin life at home, has been tried and 
found not so satisfactory as the Virgin life in 
Community. If we may, then, consider the 
objections to the Common life answered in some 
degree, we are free to study it in its require- 
ments, its difficulties, and its advantages. 

. The Common life has three absolute require- 
ments, without which it cannot be carried on — 
a rule, a head, and a house. There must be rule 
to which all are pledged in full and equal obedi- 
ence. The importance of rule both in the indi- 
vidual life and in Community has already been 
touched upon, and what was said then of the 
discipline of character and harmony of the 
whole produced by rule need not be repeated 
here ; but the rule, whether light or severe in its 
character, must be fixed and definite, binding 
the various elements into one. Wherever rule 
is minimized either the Community life be- 
comes disintegrated or too much power is vested 
in the head, and the authority becomes arbi- 
trary. The rule of a Community is like the 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 59 

law of a country, it safeguards the interests of 
both governing and governed. 

But it is just as important to have a head as 
it is to have a rule; a head whose powers are 
limited by the rule, but who can see that the 
rule is equally and impartially administered 
and observed, who can initiate work and pro- 
vide for its continuance, who can adjust differ- 
ences, who can direct and moderate the over- 
zealous, and can stimulate and encourage the 
indolent or timid, who has general oversight of 
all the work and will not suffer the interests of 
one to be sacrificed to another part, who will 
cultivate the religious spirit in the Community 
as a whole and in each individual member. A 
good Superior must have limitless patience and 
tact. She must be most exact in her own ob- 
servance of the rule and most devout in her 
spiritual life, for she by her example sets the 
tone of the whole Community. She must be 
calm and self-contained, not given to con- 
fidences and always remembering that a half 
hour's irritability may undo the work of 
months. A seal of silence is a great safeguard 
to a Superior, who must yet know how to start 
and direct the conversation of the household, 
never letting it go beyond the limits of charity 
or modesty, nor yet allowing it to become either 



60 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

gossippy or gloomy. Her own serenity never 
disturbed, she must uphold the courage of all 
in times of discouragement, must be ready with 
a solution for every perplexity, must have good 
common sense, with discrimination of character 
and yet impartiality towards all, with warm af- 
fections and clear judgment. She must be the 
humblest woman in the house, the first to ask 
pardon for an offense, the most ready to for- 
give, the quickest to see her own faults, the most 
penitent in self-examination and confession, 
and yet able to maintain the dignity of her 
position to exact obedience and respect from all 
her subordinates. Truly if the woman can be 
found who can meet such requirements, it may 
be said of her, "Many daughters have done vir- 
tuously, but thou excellest them all." Of course 
it is not pretended that every or even any 
Superior reaches and maintains this ideal of 
character and conduct, but that such is the ideal, 
all the writers on Community life agree, and 
it is well to give it prominence, both to stir up 
the pure wills of the members of Sisterhoods 
in their choice of their head, and to disarm the 
too ready criticism of the world on the authority 
vested in the Superior. 

And then with the rule and the head, it is 
important to have a house. The members of 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 61 

the Community must have a fixed place of resi- 
dence. It will not do for them to be scattered 
into various homes and meet for certain fixed 
hours every day under their head; such is the 
plan on which some of our Associate Missions 
are carried on, such was the plan on which the 
Ursuline order was f ounded, but it is never suc- 
cessful. The Sisterhood must be a unit, a 
Christian family among the families of earth 
brought together and held together, not by the 
tie of blood but by common union with Christ. 
And it must have its home apart from others, in 
which its family life is carried on in its own 
distinct unity, from which the influence of the 
Sisterhood may radiate as from a centre, but 
into which all its powers are gathered up for 
concentration and renewal at the hours of 
prayer and meditation. 

The house must have two centres or rallying 
points: a chapel for the spiritual life and a 
common room for the social life. ISTo exigences 
of work or overcrowding should induce a Com- 
munity to dispense with either of these two 
rooms. A chapel is a necessity, not only for the 
common services but for the private devotions 
of the Community as well. The dormitories 
may be crowded, but there is always a solitary 
spot in the chapel apart from the noise and 



62 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

hurry of a busy life, and hallowed by mem- 
ories of past blessings, where the sister may feel 
herself alone before God, where she may pour 
out to His sympathizing ear her trials and diffi- 
culties, where she may renew her vows of loving 
service and her exhausted stores of grace. It is 
the place where the whole Community meets 
seven times in each day to unite in praise of 
God and in prayer to Him, and where each feels 
the common bond that unites the whole Sister- 
hood, encircling her with renewed power. And 
it is here that the true Bread of Life is given to 
hungry souls, daily if it may be, at least as 
often as possible. 

Second in importance to the chapel is the 
common room, where once in each day all the 
members of the Community are gathered for 
recreation and the interchange of social life, 
where the individual members become acquaint- 
ed with one another, and individual qualities 
are brought out, not in the strain of work but in 
the pleasant relaxation of conversation. The 
lighter and more graceful faculties are given 
play, and courtesy towards and kindly interest 
in one another are cultivated. Many a little 
stiffness and soreness is smoothed away by an 
hour of genial intercourse, and homesickness 
melts away in the warmth and friendliness of a 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 63 

home life as real as, though differing in some 
of its features from, the home life left behind. 

The house may be in the beginning a rented 
house, but it is advisable sooner or later for the 
Community to own its house, both for the sake 
of permanence and of adaptability to its needs. 
The early Franciscans objected to owning a 
house because it was property and therefore 
contrary to the vow of poverty, but their own 
subsequent history shows the importance of a 
fixed place of residence for a Community, there 
being few greater evils or scandals in the re- 
ligious life than wandering sisters or unsettled 
monks. 

There are of course difficulties in living the 
Community life. People are human still and 
retain their human frailties, even when really 
consecrated to God. It is perhaps harder for 
women to live together in peace and harmony 
than for men, being naturally of a more nervous 
and sensitive temperament. And in every Com- 
munity there are brought together very opposite 
dispositions with differing degrees of refine- 
ment and education. And in every such com- 
mingling it is the most refined and the best edu- 
cated who have to make the largest sacrifices, 
because more capable of them. This must be 
counted in that summing up of the cost which 



64 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

every sensible person must make before enter- 
ing upon such a life. It is part, and a very real 
part, of the vow of poverty. 

Then, too, in every Community, even small 
ones, there are some on trial who have no true 
vocation, no real consecration, coming and go- 
ing, for short periods, perhaps, but to be borne 
with patiently while in residence. In the Com- 
munity itself, where perhaps all are conse- 
crated, there are some more completely so than 
others, and the higher ideal must not give way 
to the lower, hence a constant strain upon the 
spiritual life, the striving after or the mainte- 
nance of the high ideal with a lower one con- 
stantly battling for recognition. 

Then there can be but one head in any Com- 
munity, and the duty of obedience is sometimes 
very hard to one accustomed to her personal lib- 
erty, perhaps by nature better fitted to rule than 
the elected head, and it is often just as hard to 
one who is not fitted to rule at all. And the 
Superior herself has greatly misconceived her 
position and her duties if she does not consider 
herself chosen to be the servant of all, bound 
to a more exacting obedience than any of her 
sisters. In Sisterhoods where the election of a 
Superior is not for life, the difficult art must 
be learned of stepping down from a position of 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 65 

authority to one of subordination, of seeing 
one's favorite methods superseded by others, of 
cooperating heartily with plans the opposite, 
perhaps, of one's own devising. 

But where is the grace to come from to meet 
such large demands upon frail human nature ? 
Where, indeed, but from the religious life it- 
self, of which the chapel is the central point in 
the house, the common services, especially the 
frequent Communions, the hour of private med- 
itation and prayer, the self-examinations and 
penitent confessions with the wise counsel of 
the Community chaplain, careful in spiritual 
direction of the needs of each soul committed 
to his care. The importance of Confession in 
Sisterhood life can hardly be overestimated. It 
is an effectual check upon the brooding over real 
or fancied wrongs, it heals the breaches made by 
impatience and selfishness in the household, it 
stirs up spiritual fervor when the first love is 
beginning to grow cold, it holds the Community 
up to the observance of its rule when there is an 
epidemic of laxity, and controls and modifies a 
zeal that is injurious to health, it encourages 
and renews the faith of the discouraged, and 
checks the self -elation of the successful. It is 
a ministry of healing in the household, and no 
religious Community can afford to dispense 



66 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

with it. It should be made a part of the Rule 
with a minimum observance obligatory upon 
every member of the Community. If the ob- 
jection be made that this is a curtailment of in- 
dividual Christian liberty, we may answer, so is 
every part of the rule ; and while confession is 
not obligatory upon members of the Church at 
large, neither is the Community life. If there 
be any personal objections to confession, there 
are still greater ones to that person entering 
upon a state of life in which confession is so 
necessary. 

Having touched upon the difficulties of the 
Community life, let us now consider its advan- 
tages. 

First, it is educational in the very best sense 
of the word. The standard is set by the best in 
the Community. It is a levelling up, not a lev- 
elling down; if not in mind and in special ac- 
quirements, yet in that best part of education, 
good manners. Courtesy towards each other, 
neatness in person and in dress, orderliness in 
the household, modesty in speaking of oneself, 
readiness to admire or at least to be interested 
in others, gentleness in manner, with softness 
of modulation and distinctness of utterance in 
speech, are Christian duties with the sister and 
cultivated as such. There should be nothing 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 67 

slovenly nor unfinished about the well-trained 
sister. Grace of manner, combined with com- 
plete self-forgetfulness, is the ideal on which 
she is formed, the outward grace springing from 
that inward fountain of grace from which she 
draws all her supplies for every human need; 
and so her manners are not a veneer, a surface 
polish, an imitation, but the real gentility of 
Christian courtesy. 

Another advantage of Community life is its 
broadening effect upon the character. A world- 
ly life is very narrowing to the mind. The 
business man takes no interest in the man of 
letters, and vice versa. A man shows his 
breadth of mind by the multitude and variety 
of his interests, and most men, even some very 
cultivated men, judged by that test, would be 
found very narrow in mind. 

And if that is true of men, how much more 
is it true of women ? The cares of her nursery 
or her household, of her parish societies or her 
clubs, or of her social duties, are by turns all 
absorbing to a woman. Few are able to com- 
bine in just proportions even two of these in- 
terests at any one period of her life; but in a 
Community there is a const-ant tendency to 
broaden the mind by change and interchange of 
occupation, producing larger and more varied 



68 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

interests. The care of children to a Sister 
makes all childhood interesting, while in the 
merely natural mother it often limits her inter- 
ests and sympathies to her own brood. Nurs- 
ing the sick is done on the same large principles 
by a Sisterhood, and housework becomes an in- 
tellectual occupation when accompanied with 
prayer and meditation and done with the zeal of 
God's service. 

The Sister's points of contact with the world 
are more numerous and deeper than those of the 
ordinary woman, for they are with the soul's 
life as well as with the external circumstances, 
whereas in ordinary social life we rarely pene- 
trate below the surface. But the sister is 
equally at home in the kitchen of the poor and 
the drawing-room of the wealthy, unshaken in 
her serenity either by the coarseness of poverty 
or the arrogance of riches, self-assertive with 
neither, courteous to both. When we consider 
the peculiarities and frivolities of the old maid, 
so frequently and so coarsely criticised and 
caricatured in the world, and then turning to 
the Sisterhood life, find those imperfections 
conspicuously absent, we may realize how much 
the Common life does for women in refining 
and broadening, in developing and exercising 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 69 

the lesser graces, the minor beauties of char- 
acter that make for loveliness. 



OHAPTEE VII 



THE TEMPTATION'S OF THE COMMUNITY LIFE. 




T is somewhat strange that among 
all the objections urged against the 
Community life by its opponents, 
there is never a word of its real 
dangers and temptations. For an account of 
these with grave and tender cautions against 
them we must go to the pages of its warmest 
advocates. 

There is something certainly puerile in at- 
tacking an institution without taking the trou- 
ble to acquaint oneself sufficiently with it to 
know what its weak points really are, and if the 
objectors could know how most of their argu- 
ments sound to those who have really made a 
study of the Eeligious life, they would be silent 
from very confusion. That the life has its spe- 
cial temptations and dangers is no more than 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 71 

saying that it is a human mode of life in a sin- 
stricken world. There is a large exemption 
granted from many temptations that assail one 
in the world. The sins of Dives, those of lux- 
ury, of vanity, of selfish ease and f orgetfulness 
of the poor, scarcely knock at the door of our 
religious houses, where plain living and high 
thinking without either austerity or excess are 
the rule. Likewise the sins of the Magdalen, of 
unchastity, that alas ! permeate even the upper 
ranks of our social life and are gradually de- 
stroying the sanctity of marriage, find no place 
among the Virgin hearts that have surrendered 
themselves to the keeping of Christ. And if the 
subtler sin of the Pharisee, spiritual pride, the 
"I am holier than thou," does creep in, it can 
find no large place in a life whose holiness is 
hotly contested by the majority of those in 
whose praise pride delights. 

No, the temptations are not these, and 
surely a mode of life that can protect the soul 
from such as these is at least well worth study 
by those who abhor sin and who believe in flee- 
ing from temptation. And yet the life has its 
own peculiar temptations, so peculiar to itself 
that the untried soul, fresh from the grosser 
forms of sin that have assailed it outside of the 
cloister, may fail to recognize these as sin, and 



72 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

therein lies their especial danger. Indeed they 
have sometimes been hailed as virtues by those 
who ought to have known better, and their vol- 
untary victims looked upon as heroines of ro- 
mance or modern martyrs. Of course the unre- 
pentant sinner, whether in the world or in the 
cloister, never recognizes her own sin, and al- 
ways self-deceived, sometimes succeeds in de- 
ceiving others; but dupes as a rule have some 
interests of their own to serve in being duped. 
First, and perhaps most dangerous, is spir- 
itual discontent, accidie, as the theologians call 
it. Sourness of spirit was the name our fore- 
fathers gave it; lukewarmness or love grown 
cold, according to Saint John. After great ex- 
altation there inevitably comes a natural reac- 
tion; our fine gold becomes dim, our strongest 
resolves seem like tow. It is in such times of 
weakness that accidie assails us. The inner life 
of the spirit, in which, like Enoch of old, we 
have walked with God, has suddenly lost its 
reality to us, has become dim and shadowy and 
unsubstantial, and a cold materialism which we 
call common sense, pronounces the whole expe- 
rience through which we have passed a dream of 
folly. Or it may come in a form harder to 
resist, in a slow, scarcely perceptible slackening 
of fervor, a loss of interest in the services which 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 73 

gradually spreads to the work and the life of the 
Community, a spiritual and mental indolence 
that in time becomes physical also, and every 
part of the rule becomes a burden, evaded where 
possible, and obeyed only with grumbling and 
dislike. The Sister who yields to the approaches 
of this temptation gradually loses her cheerful- 
ness and often with it her health, for having 
lost delight in spiritual things, what delight has 
she left ? And consumed with self-pity, she 
feels that she has made a fatal mistake. Then 
comes the stage of irritability with her com- 
panions, of rebellion against her superiors, of 
her withdrawal from the Community either to 
seek some other sisterhood, with like results, or 
to justify herself by writing a book or giving 
lectures on the evils of the Community life as 
seen through the green and seasick spectacles of 
accidie. Egotism is the foundation of the whole 
mischief, and such characters are sure to be- 
tray themselves as thoroughly egotistic, only sat- 
isfied when talking of their experiences, their 
opinions, their virtues, their misfortunes. It 
must be resisted in its first approaches, for by 
its very nature it becomes impossible to resist 
in its later stages. The first temptation to lie 
abed in the morning beyond the appointed hour, 
to get oneself excused from private meditation 



74 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

or common services for insufficient reason, to 
shirk one's share of common work, or to absent 
oneself from the common social hour, will be 
followed up by succeeding temptations of like 
nature with increasing frequency unless the 
first one is resisted. Let the devout soul, then, 
take alarm at these first indications of the dis- 
eased spirit, at meditations that end in self -con- 
templation, at every pleasurable thought of self, 
and guarding herself by prayer, by confession, 
by increased effort of self sacrifice from the at- 
tacks of the enemy, she may make her very 
temptations a means of growth in grace. Here- 
in lies the difference between accidie and the 
spiritual desolation of the Saints. Desolation 
is the temptation to accidie stoutly and persist- 
ently resisted, never for a moment yielded to, 
and so remaining temptation only and not sin, 
it becomes the crucible in which the quality of 
saints is tried by fire, spiritual fire and afflic- 
tion. It has been sanctified to us by our Lord's 
sufferings in Gethsemane and on the cross and 
ever since He trod it, it has been the via purga- 
tiva of His most faithful followers. But re- 
member it is the resistance to the temptation 
that makes the desolation and the saint ; yield- 
ing to it makes us fallen stars, clouds without 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 75 

water driven of contrary winds, a wavering 
wave of the sea, a lost vocation, a broken vow. 

Another temptation, innocent in appearance 
and yet fruitful in disaster both to the Com- 
munity life and to the individual vocation if 
yielded to, is that of undue intimacies. It is a 
duty to love all in the Community, but it would 
be abnormal and therefore a distortion of our 
human nature to love all equally or in the same 
way. There are natural affinities that draw cer- 
tain members of a Community together as nec- 
essarily as the magnet draws iron, and it is a 
real maiming of the character as is done in some 
Roman Sisterhoods always to separate those 
who are especially drawn to one another. Our 
Lord in having a beloved disciple has shown us 
that we may have our human attachments, and 
He has also shown us their limits. It is true 
St. John leaned upon His bosom at the Last 
Supper and was chosen to be the caretaker of 
the Blessed Virgin, but no favor was ever shown 
him above the others. He was rebuked as 
sharply as St. Peter when need was, he was de- 
nied the only request he ever made publicly; 
when he was deputed by the others to ask about 
the betrayer, he was answered in an enigma as 
any of them would have been. Can we have 
our affections without partiality, without loss of 



76 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

reserve, without taking from others, time or 
consideration or service due to them, in order to 
give it to the one chiefly beloved ? Then there 
is no sin. But the temptation to an extravagant 
affection, that leads a sister to absent herself 
from the common social life for more intimate 
and private converse with her friend, to the in- 
terchange of a hundred little partialities in 
which others have no share, gives rise to heart 
burnings and jealousies, to the formation of 
cliques and the gradual disintegration of the 
common life. The temptation to such inti- 
macies should, therefore, be steadily resisted 
with all their tendencies to flatter egotism and 
narrow the sympathies. The tide of love should 
flow through a religious house in a full and even 
current, not as a tumultuous and perhaps de- 
structive torrent. 

Another temptation of the Community life 
is to the loss of the sense of individual respon- 
sibility. When the day is parcelled out into its 
hours of work and of prayer, duties assigned 
and every detail of the life provided for, the 
Community and the Rule sometimes become 
paramount ; and the sister may lose sight of the 
fact that, after all, they are only means to an 
end, not the end itself, which is the union of the 
soul to Christ, and so a mechanical routine may 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 77 

take the place of individual impulse and sap the 
soul's energy. This is sometimes the case with 
very perfectly trained sisters, who seem to be 
fulfilling their vocation admirably, but the flaw 
shows itself when they are called to some posi- 
tion of responsibility, or are obliged to meet 
some unlooked for emergency and they are un- 
able to stand the test. This fault may show 
itself in other ways also, such as the narrowing 
of the sympathies, the lack of interest in things 
outside the Community, or even promoting the 
interests of the Community at the expense of 
personal integrity, and excusing it to oneself on 
the ground that it is not a personal aggrandize- 
ment that is sought. This throwing of one's 
personal responsibility upon the Community 
comes from a sort of spiritual indolence that is 
content with prescribed forms and ceremonies 
without entering earnestly into their spirit, an 
externalism very fatal to the interior life. It 
is impossible so long as the soul is in intimate 
and constant Communion with her Lord, refer- 
ring everything to Him, sensitive to the least 
whisper of His voice. Contact with Him must 
be individual or not at all, and that being the 
real end of the religious life, when it is attained 
it keeps all the various parts of it in subordina- 
tion to itself and in harmony with one another. 



78 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

Let us touch briefly upon still another form 
of temptation not uncommon in the Community 
life ; and that is claiming a precedence for one- 
self or an immunity from certain things because 
one is a sister. It may be noted that this is just 
the opposite to the last mentioned in form — that 
being to hide oneself behind the Community, 
this to merge the Community into oneself. It is 
certainly a great mistake to suppose that being 
the servant of Christ and wearing His livery 
exempts one from bearing the lesser burdens of 
humanity. On the contrary, our Lord Himself 
gives us the Command — "He that is greatest 
among you shall be your servant" — and 
it is most contrary to His spirit to be ag- 
grieved at some lack of courtesy or respect in 
our daily intercourse with the outside world. A 
sister should be as willing to stand in the street 
car as any other woman, must expect to be jos- 
tled in a crowd or to wait her turn at ticket office 
or bank, should stand back for others to pass in 
any press. As a matter of fact, many little 
courtesies are shown her in the business world 
on account of her habit, but she should never 
presume upon them, and always receive them 
when tendered with gratitude, never as a matter 
of right. Meekness and lowliness of spirit are 
expected of those who wear the livery of 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 79 

Christ's household servants. Most unfortunate 
it is when their absence is emphasized by the 
garb. 

It may be asked where is the advantage of 
fleeing from temptation in the world, only to 
meet with it in new and subtler forms in the 
cloister. And indeed there is no advantage. If 
that be one's only motive for entering the re- 
ligious life, if there be no personal constraining 
love of Christ and obedience to His calling in 
the heart, it would be far better to remain in 
the world. There is no place on this earth her- 
metically sealed from temptation, nor is there 
meant to be. The reason may be beyond our 
comprehension, but the fact is clear to us all: 
that in this life we are tried by temptation, and 
that no condition of life exempts us from it. 
The form of it may change, the essence remains 
the same. Temptation is a sieve by which the 
chaff is sifted from the wheat. It is in the dev- 
il's hands, but he is not free in its use, being 
checked and restrained by the preventive grace 
of God. He may sorely trouble the good wheat 
but not a grain of it may he appropriate ; only 
the chaff is his. And so temptation is constant- 
ly separating the bad from the good, keeping 
the good from being contaminated, showing the 
hideousness, the final end of evil. And while it 



80 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

has this effect in the world, and to a very con- 
siderable extent the good and bad are really sep- 
arated even there, so in the individual, the chaff, 
the weaknesses, the evil tendencies are gradu- 
ally eliminated by the process of repeated sift- 
ing, the resistance to daily temptation; and 
there is no saint in all God's kalendar recorded 
in heaven, but owes his strongest claim to 
blessedness to the steady, unwavering conflict 
with evil. If yielding to temptation makes sin- 
ners, resistance to it makes saints ; and the con- 
flict, though necessarily taking different forms, 
less gross, more subtilized, more spiritual, is 
waged as vigorously and as constantly in the 
cloister as in the world. Hence the need of con- 
fession and absolution in the religious life. 
There are probably no sincerer penitents before 
God's tribunal than are to be found in our Sis- 
terhoods among women of exceptionally holy 
lives, to whom self-sacrifice is second nature, 
and devotion the very air they breathe. It is 
not necessary to have sinned grossly to be deeply 
penitent. Indeed the grosser forms of sin usu- 
ally make the conscience obtuse and callous, 
and penitence, as a pure and holy passion, is 
rarely found at all, perhaps, and only among 
those whose nearness to God renders them pain- 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 81 

fully and keenly alive to the least spot of sin 
in themselves. 

Not until we have met and successfully re- 
sisted temptation and sin in ourselves, can we 
cope with them in others. We must be able to 
recognize these when we see them under what- 
ever disguise, by having studied them in and ex- 
pelled them from ourselves. Then are we ready 
to fight them outside. Of course the internal 
and external conflict must in most cases go on 
at the same time, but the internal conflict 
must be considerably advanced before we can 
begin to have success in the external con- 
flict; the struggle with vice and crime in our 
great cities, with brutality and indifference in 
our rural neighborhoods. It is one of the great- 
est trials of the religious life, this delicate sensi- 
tiveness to sin and yet constant contact with it 
in its most loathsome forms, its most unbecom- 
ing consequences; but some one must do it if 
the plague is to be kept from spreading. If 
children are to be rescued from evil surround- 
ings, if there are to be cases of real repentance 
and amendment among adults, there must be 
some not afraid to touch the sore spots of our 
boasted civilization, to meet sin and contend 
with it for the souls of men; and such is the 
high office, the painful privilege, of the virgin 



82 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

life. Only truly virgin souls may dare such a 
work, those who by prayer and self-discipline 
are to some extent immunes, that will not be in 
danger of themselves taking the disease and fur- 
ther spreading it. Only those who are them- 
selves true penitents can offer up intercessions 
for the sins of humanity, those sins that go up 
from our centres of population like the smoke 
of a great furnace, crying aloud for retribution 
from a just and sinless God. What could stay 
the hand of the destroying angel save the pray- 
ers of repentance ? And such is part of the 
work of our Sisterhoods. Weak and feeble as 
are their prayers, imperfect as is their peni- 
tence, yet they reach the Throne of the All Mer- 
ciful, who is ever more ready to spare than to 
strike ; and who can tell how mighty these frail 
intercessions become when they have -touched 
Omnipotence ? 




OIIAPTEE VIII. 

POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO THE COMMUNITY LIFE. 

I HERE is a strong popular prejudice 
to the Community life fed by mis- 
conception and ignorance, and al- 
ways strongest when the spiritual 
life of the Church is at its lowest and her spir- 
itual claims most disputed. Some of these mis- 
conceptions have been touched upon and an- 
swered in preceding chapters, the real dangers 
rarely or never embodied in popular objections 
have also been pointed out, and there remain 
now, some of the favorite stock arguments 
against the Community life to be disposed of. 
One of these is that a convent is a prison into 
which young girls are decoyed and shut up for 
life. It would be almost too absurd to an- 
swer were it not that some people actually 
think it, unthinkable as it would seem by any 



84 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

person in the possession of his reason. Set- 
ting aside the character of the women who 
form our Sisterhoods and whose lives of de- 
voted charity to the sick and poor and or- 
phaned should place them above such sus- 
picion, the utter impossibility of such a thing 
is at once evident, young girls not being as 
easy to decoy as ducks, and being still more 
difficult to conceal from the search of frantic 
relations, and being themselves utterly useless 
in any work to which they are unwillingly com- 
pelled as every mistress of a boarding school 
knows. Short indeed would be the career of our 
Sisterhoods if such were their recruits. On the 
contrary it is far more difficult to enter a Sister- 
hood than it is to leave it. There are guards 
placed at every step of the way to prevent the 
admission of unworthy and unwilling candi- 
dates. They are instructed in the rule, given 
experience of the work and life, subjected to 
various tests of character, put on long probation 
before they are allowed to take the life vow that 
binds them forever to the Community. It is a 
matter too important to the whole Community 
to be left in the hands of one or two superior 
officers, but every member of the Community 
has a voice in the election of a new sister, and 
mere faults of manner if uneradicated in the 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 85 

discipline of the Novitiate are sometimes suffi- 
cient to rule out a candidate, so careful are the 
sisters about those who are to be associated with 
them for life. It may be well here to state that 
Sisterhoods also are not reformatories, as seems 
to be the impression in some quarters, judging 
from the applications from divorcees and mor- 
phine eaters that sometimes have to be rejected 
by our Sisterhoods. Only the best material, 
fully arrived at maturity, knowing their own 
minds and filled with the love of Christ and 
endowed with enough talent to make them suc- 
cessful in any sphere of life are wanted in our 
Communities. Raw girls, green enough to be 
decoyed, or romantic young women living in a 
world of unreality, or feeble minded persons too 
weak to resist the will of another, are not wanted 
and are speedily dismissed from every really 
active Community. So if our convents are pris- 
ons then are they filled with very willing pris- 
oners rejoicing in their captivity, which is to 
Christ and not to the world, bonds voluntarily 
chosen and therefore that do not gall nor need 
to be gilded as the world's fetters must be before 
they can be worn. 

It has been urged, but it is difficult to believe 
seriously, that our Sisterhoods are under the 
direction of Roman priests, Jesuits. Of course 



86 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

the answer to that is in any of our Church An- 
nuals, where the names of the Chaplains of our 
various sisterhoods are given, chaplains who are 
priests in good standing in the "Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the United States of 
America." Also the Bishops in whose Dioceses 
and under whose jurisdiction our Sisterhoods 
are placed, would be quite able to answer such 
objections if the propounders of them really 
cared enough about the truth to make inquiry. 
It is certainly crediting the Jesuits with a self- 
abnegation or a fatuity beyond their deserts, to 
suppose them to be fostering institutions in the 
Church from which they get neither credit nor 
profit and which are every day proving them- 
selves bulwarks against the pretensions of 
Rome. Many of our laymen become converts to 
the Roman Church, a scattering few of our 
priests somewhat multiplied in the minds of 
people by their enthusiastic reception, but sis- 
ters from our Sisterhoods, never.* A strange 
result, surely, of Jesuit direction if there were a 
shadow of truth in the absurd charge. Another 
objection to Sisterhoods is in their dress, and 
perhaps this objection can be best answered by 
giving the reasons why a uniform dress is 



* This does not refer to wandering sisters unat- 
tached to any regular Community. 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 87 

adopted. First, of course, economy — a consid- 
eration always with our Sisterhoods which aim 
to do the greatest amount of work possible with 
the smallest outlay of money, and in dressing 
a number of people it is always cheaper to buy 
goods by the piece and cut it out by the same 
pattern; and the second consideration is neat- 
ness, much more easily and surely attained 
where the dress is always the same ; and a third 
is equality, all the Sisters having everything in 
common, no difference made even in their cloth- 
ing, with no room for the indulgence of vanity 
or the receiving of gifts. There is another rea- 
son, too, of some importance. Most women 
spend much time and thought on their clothes, 
both in planning and wearing — a sister wearing 
her uniform never gives a thought to it, her new 
habit comes to her when the old is worn out, and 
being the same in cut and fit she is used to it at 
once, there is no sense of newness about it and 
she wears it as easily and unconsciously as an 
old garment. The dress is also a protection to 
a sister, respected as it is by the worst of men, 
and enables her to go unharmed through alleys 
and tenements that would be dangerous or scan- 
dalous for a lady not so protected. It is also a 
great advantage in travelling and in business, 
as it procures many little civilities and econ- 



88 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

omies not otherwise attainable. The wholesale 
department of a store is always open to a sister, 
and cheaper rates of travel usually accorded 
her. All these reasons combined make the argu- 
ment for a prescribed dress of irresistible 
weight. But the objection lies really more 
against the form of the dress than the fact of a 
uniform. Why shmild it be so like the Roman 
Sisters' dress ? But really it is not. There is 
as great variety in the dress of the various or- 
ders of the Roman Church as in the uniforms of 
the various armies of Europe. That the essen- 
tial characteristics are the same is necessitated 
by the fact that they are to be adapted to similar 
conditions. A dress that must be worn day in 
and day out for a year, must be made of stout 
material that will stand the wear and tear of 
every-day life, must be easily cleaned, and must 
be easy fitting, hanging from the shoulders and 
not from the waist. Given those essential re- 
quirements, sit down to design a dress and you 
will produce not a f ac simile of the dress of any 
known Sisterhood, but one whose general ap- 
pearance would remind you of a Sisterhood 
dress. The veil perhaps is the one exception to 
the severe utility of the dress, and the Sisters of 
Charity in the Roman Church do not wear it, 
replacing it with a large white linen cap or a 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 89 

black crepe bonnet. But a dress to be perfect 
must be more than merely utilitarian, it must 
express in some manner the character, the inner 
self of the wearer. And woman's dress, so 
much more flexible than man's, usually does 
this, and it is one reason that it is such an ab- 
sorbing theme for thought and conversation 
with most women. The sister's dress is no 
exception to this principle. Its symbolic char- 
acter remains along with its general utility, 
and there is no part of it but what a sister may 
put on with prayer that it may be a true expres- 
sion of her inner life, the veil expressing retire- 
ment and bereavement, the widowhood of the 
soul that is looking and longing for her Lord, 
and will content herself with no other joys; the 
girdle betokening patience and labor, the cloak 
the warm and ample folds of a life of charity. 
If our Sisterhoods are not living up to this 
promise of their habit, then pray to God for 
them instead of criticising them for high aims. 
Our aims ought to be high, and our realization 
of them higher than it is. 

There are those who object to the life vow 
on account of its presumption, as they call it, 
tempting God by binding themselves for all 
time to a state of life when they know not what 
the future may bring forth, and so settling the 



90 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

future for themselves which is and should be in 
God's hands only. Of course this objection 
works both ways, and if it is presumptuous to 
take the vows of virginity it is equally pre- 
sumptuous to take the vows of marriage. The 
reasons for a life vow were discussed in a pre- 
vious chapter, it is only this one point of pre- 
sumption that need be taken up here, and if that 
is not sufficiently answered by applying the ob- 
jection to the marriage vow, then we would 
humbly urge that there is as great presumption 
in refusing God's choice of us to be His virgins 
until death as to take the vows believing it to be 
His will. The objection applies only to those 
who rush into it without having their vocation 
tested, and how that can be in our long noviti- 
ates it is difficult to imagine. The lapsed sisters 
who have returned to the world are those who 
have yielded to the temptations that assail all 
who enter the life, rather than those who have 
mistaken their vocation. "We may well ask our- 
selves whence comes this bitter prejudice, this 
wilful ignorance concerning an institution that 
has grown up among us so quietly and unosten- 
tatiously, whose fruits are so evidently those 
sweet and wholesome charities that are every- 
where the true sign of the Church ? Why is it 
that men and women otherwise intelligent and 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 91 

well informed indulge in such absurd and ex- 
travagant suspicions, advance such puerile and 
baseless objections to a mode of life that should 
disarm suspicion by its innocence and charm 
even prejudice, by its good works ? It aims to 
harm none and to be helpful to all. Even did it 
not fulfil its aim nearly so well as it does, why 
should it be subject to such bitter attacks as are 
never levelled against social organizations of a 
non-religious type, such as the social settle- 
ments ? There are no objections made to our 
deaconesses as there are to sisters. Why ? Be- 
cause they are more useful ? Hardly ! Because 
they are more devoted? No such reason has 
been given. Indeed our objectors would be hard 
put to it to give a reason for their conscious bias 
against Sisterhoods, except the well-worn one 
that they are so like the Roman Catholic Sister- 
hoods, though they would themselves admit that 
the great institutions of the Roman Church 
must challenge their admiration, and its meth- 
ods of work are worthy of imitation. It is in- 
deed impossible to account for the bitter cen- 
sure of a mode of life worthy of the highest 
praise, except by ascribing it to the subtle influ- 
ence of the Prince of the power of the air, who 
is ever the enemy of all things that are good, 
and whom all Sisterhoods regard as their espe- 



92 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

cial foe. If this seems fanciful to the some- 
what materialistic common sense of the present 
day, we must not forget that the unseen world 
that lies about us has its forces of evil as well 
as of good. However, if some other theory can 
be found to fit the facts better, by all means let 
us have it. Let some one of our detractors 
study the philosophy of his objections to Com- 
munity life and propound not baseless calum- 
nies, but sober reasons, against it. Perhaps if 
we could understand the real grounds of so 
deep-seated and widespread a prejudice, much 
might be done to soften or remove it and smooth 
somewhat the path of the sister's life, surely 
difficult enough in this sin-laden world of ours 
without the added thorns of calumny. 



CHAPTER IX. 



HELPS AND HINDRANCES, 




HE Estate of Virginity has been 
most highly prized in every age of 
the Church but this. St. Paul ex- 
presses himself most strongly in its 
favor. St. Cyprian, two hundred years later, 
extols it as the perfect flower of the Christian 
Faith. There is a sermon existing of the au- 
thorship of the Venerable Bede giving it un- 
stinted praise. Its status during the Middle 
Ages and at the time of the Reformation is well 
known. It is impossible to read Church his- 
tory without conceding to it an important place 
in the life and work of the Church itself. The 
argument from history is even more overwhelm- 
ingly in its favor than the argument of utility 
advanced in these pages, and claims a higher 
place for this favorite daughter of the Church 



94 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

than we would venture to ask. We but desire 
toleration and freedom to make our choice un- 
hampered by the prejudices, the calumnies, and 
the sordid arguments, sometimes amounting to 
positive prohibition when there is the authority, 
from those who call themselves our friends. 
History makes a claim so imperious and com- 
pelling that we have not dared to offer it here. 
But anyone who chooses to read and study may 
find it for himself. Community life invites in- 
vestigation in its sources, in its progress, in its 
present condition. It bases its claim to your 
recognition on its utility, its historical connec- 
tion with the Church, its Apostolic origin. 

What, then, is the attitude that we as 
Christians should hold towards this new In- 
stitution, that is yet as old as the Church, 
that has taken its place among us so timidly, 
asking so little, and that yet has such large 
rights ? What should we expect of Christian 
parents and what is to be hoped for from our 
priesthood ? 

When a daughter tells her mother the secret 
yearning of her heart for the religious life, 
what is the mother's response ? Of old it was a 
fervent gratitude to God that He had so hon- 
ored her child. What is it now? How many 
mothers willingly give up their daughters to all 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 95 

the horrors of an unhappy marriage, rather 
than relinquish them to the cloister with its 
peace and holy communion with God % 

Many are the young hearts that have been 
turned away from the vocation, the calling of 
God, by their mother, to their eternal loss; 
many that have persevered have been wounded 
and estranged by the harsh conduct of their par- 
ents in regard to their religious life. What 
mother has yet taught her daughter to look upon 
the virgin life as a high and holy privilege, not 
indeed to choose, but to follow if chosen \ Some 
there have been found who have dedicated a son 
to the priesthood, but what mother has dedi- 
cated a daughter to God ? Yet this ought to be, 
and this will be in another generation. 

How much a mother might do toward 
smoothing the path and preparing the young 
soul for the renunciation of the world and for 
meeting the trials and difficulties of the Virgin 
life. She considers herself indeed remiss if 
she has not prepared her daughter for her mar- 
ried life ; but what has she done for her young 
virgin daughter who, to follow her Lord, has 
left her home and her parents without a blessing 
from their lips or a God-speed upon her venture 
of faith? Authority is strained to the utter- 
most to prevent obedience to Christ, and where 



96 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

authority fails, worldly seductions and tempta- 
tions have often been tried. A Christian mother 
to become the temptress of her own daughter, 
and all to keep her from the love of Christ! 
Can such things be ? 

It is needful indeed to inquire into the 
strength and sincerity of her convictions, but 
need the inquiry be more strict and searching 
than it would be in case of a worldly betrothal ? 
Is not God's love as safe for happiness as any 
human love ? Family ties would not be so 
strained and broken by the religious life, if fam- 
ily opposition to it were removed. Interchange 
of visits would be frequent if they could be 
made pleasant and helpful ; but where they but 
increase bitterness and strife, it is better to re- 
main apart. And so a daughter loses her moth- 
er and all the help she could give her, and the 
mother the daughter, not from the religious life 
falsely charged with the separation, but from 
worldly passions. 

How sweet it would be were the mother her- 
self to lead her daughter to the door of the Vir- 
gin life, to follow her thither in religious re- 
tirement on many occasions, to endow with her 
prayers and her blessings the home of her child ; 
as an Associate of the Sisterhood, to keep in 
touch with all that interests her daughter. 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 97 

And the father has a duty here as well as the 
mother : to help, not to hinder ; to give what he 
can afford, if not money, then of time, of sound 
business or professional advice to the Com- 
munity of which his child is part; and such 
generous, large-hearted sympathy would reap 
its reward in the strengthening and securing 
of those very ties now so often snapped; for 
were the home congenial, the virgin daughter 
would have more frequent opportunities of re- 
visiting the family hearth than does the mar- 
ried child. 

And our priests, what are they doing for the 
jeligious life ? Happy are we if we have not 
sermons levelled directly against it in our par- 
ish church, if we may secure a little supercilious 
toleration for it from those who feel and do noi 
hesitate to say that the ordinary life is much to 
be preferred. All this piety, we hear, tends 
to make one conspicuous and is totally unneces- 
sary. The work could be done just as well 
without it. Could it, indeed? Let them but 
try it and see for themselves. All charitable 
work except that done by religious orders is 
done for a salary. Men and women are paid 
for it as they are paid for stenography or book- 
keeping; and charity has become a business 
such as these. It requires an exalted piety con- 



98 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

stantly kept aflame by the hours of devotion and 
meditation which only the Community life can 
provide, to keep one steadily to an uncongenial 
work making large demands upon one's time, 
and purse, and sympathy. 

And our clergy should be the ones to foster 
and develop carefully the. piety that bears such 
fruits; not seek to stunt or uproot it. They 
have large opportunities of directing young 
girls and older women who come to them in the 
enthusiasm of a newly awakened spirituality 
into the way of the religious life. Some few 
are faithful to their high calling and responsi- 
bility ; but how many dissipate these virgin 
energies into feeble parish organizations, and 
exhaust them in the frivolities of sales and 
suppers ? In Confirmation instructions and at 
the tribunal of penitence, many a word in sea- 
son might be spoken, to gather in virgin souls 
to serve in the Lord's House, and a good word 
for the religious life might be said in many a 
sermon, clearing away the popular prejudice 
that cloud the minds of our people. Short- 
sighted indeed are our priests that are so wast- 
ing the powers of the Church, wasting by fail- 
ing to use, or using for trivial purposes, voca- 
tions that, turned into their proper channel, 
might provide every Diocese with its Sisterhood 



COMMUNITY LIFE. 99 

and so immensely increase the working force of 
the Church. 

And would not the blessing return in double 
measure upon those who gave it? The devo- 
tional fervor fostered in the heart of another 
by their efforts and wise direction would be 
increased in their own lives and to their own 
order. More of our young men would be pre- 
senting themselves for holy orders if they had 
sisters in our religious houses stimulating them 
by their prayers and their example. How can 
we expect such great sacrifices from our young 
men (and great is the sacrifice of those who 
enter the priesthood) when we are discouraging 
it in our young women? Are the men nat- 
urally more spiritually-minded than the women, 
that we expect so much more of them ? Capable 
of greater things they are, because God has 
made them to do the creative work of the world ; 
but from the beginning of the Christian Church, 
the virgin was set beside the priest to do the 
woman's work and make the woman's sacri- 
fices, as he was to do the man's part. God is 
never one-sided in His operations. Having 
given to women as well as to men the capacities 
for sacrifice and devotion, He expects those 
capacities to be used for Him and in His ser- 
vice. And what right has anyone to hold back 



100 COMMUNITY LIFE. 

a loving soul from making the complete sacri- 
fice, from breaking the box of alabaster and 
pouring the hoarded ointment on the Master's 
feet, not drop by drop, but all at once, in a 
complete and perfect concentration of the whole 
life? 

The spirit of niggardliness and the spirit of 
sacrifice cannot exist side by side. . At least 
women's souls are not so made. If you are to 
get their highest efficiency out of them, you 
must let them waste themselves in entire conse- 
cration; and not only will the Lord's feet be 
anointed, but also His Head, and the whole 
house, His Church, will be filled with the odor 
of the ointment. 

Life for life — yea, Lord, so let it be, 

My life for Thine, since Thine was given for me. 

How could I think a lesser gift to bring, 

Some broken, useless, fragmentary thing? 

Nay, let it be the perfect crystal, Lord, 
Offered up whole, unbroken, and unmarred. 
No part kept back for self, or sin, or strife, 
But laid at Thy feet, the full price of a life. 

Men see the work, which is the outer shell, 
The humble vessel, be it ill or well, 
That holds the life elixir for a space 
Ere it be poured from its discarded vase. 

They only see the outside of the cup, 
Thou seest within the life that's offered up, 
The heart of love in penitence immersed. 
Drink. Lord of Life, and quench Thy loving thirst. 






NOV 84 1905 



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